The Model

I love how the sixth line of each verse is sung by a second voice. I read the second voice as being the unspoken confession that the first voice really wants to say, but doesn't, or can't:

A: The picture was a masterpiece of comic timing You wouldn't laugh at all B: And I wondered what the boy was thinking A: The picture was an old collage of something classical The model with a tragic air Because without a doubt he'd given up the fight The ghost of somebody at his side

---Here the analysis is interrupted by his true thought: I wondered what the boy was thinking?

B: And if you think you see with just your eyes you're mad

---Again, an unspoken thought--perhaps too cliched to risk voicing.

A: But I was so embarressed that I missed your party It was me that paid for it eventually Because you know how much I wanted B: To meet your friend the star of stage and local press

---The second voice reveals the real reason he wanted to go to the party.

A: Frankly, I let my heavy eyelids flutter B: Because I have been sleeping badly lately

---Again, the first voice doesn't want to admit a weakness.

In the end, the person being addressed isn't impressed by the narrator--maybe because he won't reveal his true self? The lines after hint at the presence of the second voice:

"A whisper in a choir stall The man was talking about you simultaneously"

stuart murdoch started playing in coffee shops under the name "lisa helps the blind" which is why lisa keeps reappearing in several song. this directly links back to the band's original name by putting lisa in a blindfold and meeting another blind kid. love this song far too much for words.

Guy is trying to fuck a model by dating her friend and hoping that he gets with her that way. The second voice is what\'s really happening in the narrator\'s head. For example in the line, "But I was so embarressed that I missed your party\nIt was me that paid for it eventually\nBecause you know how much I wanted\nSecond voice: To meet your friend the star of stage and local press

I can't express how much I am in love with this song. It still makes me think, and every so often little bits of it will make sense to me, but yeah, quite confused. I'm thinking it's maybe a little series of vignettes in which it's addressing issues with different people, each verse or so.

And if you think you see with just your eyes you're mad 'Cause Lisa learned a lot from putting on a blindfold When she knew she had been bad She met another blind kid at a fancy dress It was the best sex she ever had

There's a reference to Lisa from Beautiful!

I wonder if it's also the same Lisa from "She's Losing It" or "Like Dylan in the Movies"...

I'm currently obsessed with this song, and I think it's the best example of why Fold Your Hands is an incredibly underrated album. Infact, alongside others like Womens Realm, Family Tree and Waiting for the Moon to Rise, it's got some of their finest work right before they started to really change their sound on Dear Catastrophe.

Normally I hate it when people just write how much they love a song, rather than sharing a new interpretation. But in this case, I haven't worked my way through the meaning of this one properly. After not having heard the song for months or probably years, I woke up the other day with the melody strongly and clearly repeating itself in my mind and had to get up fast to figure out which song it was. Bizarre. Now I can't get it out of my head. The melody is so beautiful and complex! I'm with Dudleycunningham, it's becoming one of my favorites for sure, also along with "The State I'm In". Both are understated, complex both lyrically and melodically.

I think "you" is a model the narrator has a crush on but he thinks she's out of his league, and he knows he has no chance with her ("you're not impressed by me")

This is maybe the best modern song ever written about Christianity: more pure and amazed and confused, even angry, than anything "Christian" rock or those schmaltzy campfire sing-alongs could ever aspire to. more Tom Waits than Carrie Underwood.

It is also one of the most honest songs of theirs, along with "State I Am In," which makes it my favorite: Providential inspiration coming when the "heavy eyelids flutter" while falling asleep in a church choir stall as the priest drones on -- brilliant!

The YouTube live version is more fun, more alive and spirited than the studio version.

I just took this to be the thoughts of a model, thinking about images and artists and people he knows.