Jaws of Life

good song.. i love how no one knows them..

Wintersleep is quite an amazing band and just like you said musicholic54, no one knows them.

I was never really all that sure what this song meant until I saw the video, which made me think the "jaws of life" are the certain things that show our "status" in life. In the video, he realizes that these things don't really make you a person and decides to get rid of them, such as his car, when he takes off his tie I take that as symbolizing leaving his job, and when he takes off his jacket and shoes, he is getting rid of "fashion".

Just my take on it, probably completely off

i wouldn't say no one knows them, opening for the hip isn't actually a no name deal. they're bigger than you give them credit for

they are getting bigger in Canada for sure, they are in the ECMAs at least. but they are a great example of an amazing, little-known east coast band :)

It's an embrace, I think... the jaws of life.

Hold me like a child in your warm, warm arms.

To ease the pain

Pull the metal shards, thin my clotted blood.

jaws of life is the name of the contraption that cuts through cars to rescue people in accidents. So maybe it has all those other symbolic meanings of status or embraces or what have you, but I think it's describing a car accident. he's seriously hurt and is thinking comforting, perhaps religious (parables) thoughts after an accident waiting to be saved. "there was laughter once, there were pretty songs" could refer to the radio and laughter in the car before the accident. and I think all the "sagging skin" "clotted blood" and "metal shards" stuff is self explanatory.

I think he is describing the way life can be a bittersweet duality, described by the term "The Jaws of Life." We are brought into this world innocent and beautiful, initially ignorant of various forms of suffering. As we get older and discover the dangers and brutalities of our world, life itself feels more like clamping jaws around us instead of the famed tool used to free us from a mangled mess of metal. The sudden switch from happiness to agony in both verses within the music as well as the lyrics seems to instill a sense of randomness in which life can easily bestow such pain upon us, and take it away just as quickly when we "close our eyes" and pass into tranquility and, ultimately, death.