Ether

The high-pitched part right after:

While we slept it off All the money was lost Now we can't stand up Yeah, the blood in our guts It just weighs us down now We'll crawl along Despite what goes wrong 'cause we're not that young Takes more than your guns to scare us off now

is:

Paint your face in ether Make the skies drip Make our heads hit the ground It all goes on forever Makes no difference Whether we're still around

"Now my house is far below; it's buried in snow; and I can't see my footprints anymore, they're too small..." I don't know what it is about that line, but it literally brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it. Sounds corny, I know, but it's just beautiful. ^.^;

i see an alcoholic who talks his way out of things and his kids getting taken away as well as his house.

"While you slept it off Your empire was lost Now we're not your sons Your old silver tongue It don't work too well now"

silver tongue means eloquent speech.

Then as his kids are going through the rest of their life they have more trouble then normal "We wandered off With our heads nice and soft But we were still numb And we burned in the sun And got torn to pieces"

The kids then went out of their way to get attention. not sure about the "flying" things underneath the floorboards. seems like they got in a fight, at a bar.

"I walked across from eyes And scratched my name into the sky The things beneath my floorboards fly I'll never let them out And all my teeth are down at my feet And all of the blood comes in a flood Start counting sheep"

the kids grow up ending up with the same problem as their father. they have health issues as well as they try to get by with little money. they're not scared of the problems because they are older. "While we slept it off All the money was lost Now we can't stand up Yeah, the blood in our guts It just weighs us down now We'll crawl along Despite what goes wrong 'cause we're not that young Takes more than your guns to scare us off now"

at the end i see one of the kids dying and not caring, seems almost peaceful. like the struggle in their life was so unnecessary and now they can finally be free of things that weren't their fault.

it's pretty simple though... ether is the substance that fills up space.

it's a dream, and in the end he floats up in space.

this whole album is about dreams and space.

"the things beneath my floorboards fly, i'll never let them out" it means burried secrets or feelings and how he'll never express them, maybe because he doesn't want to or can't. it's both emotionally and physically painful.

reminds me of the tell tale heart.

The demo version of this song was called "Its like a heartbeat, only, it isn't."

In my download this song is called "It's like a heartbeat, only it isn't" but whatever...

Anyway here:

Then I fall asleep again And by myself I'm wondering A forest made of skeletons Of people I once knew And all their spines are perfectly aligned Like cold power lines ...

at the end I hear "or a fork's silver tines" Which makes sens to me, because a fork's tines are the stabby bits that make the for functional, and they are perfectly aligned, got me?

I think it sounds like a world at war and the narration focus itself on this platoon.

First part talks about the daft politicians up there, trying to work things out with their speeches while soldiers are dying out there, as if they matter (we're not your sons); Second stanza tells us about a group of fresh soldiers wading off to battle, sun-burnt and all (or it could imply a nuclear blast), and suddenly the machine guns and artillery shred them into pieces as they scuttled for cover; Third stanza pictures the battle at hand, still with heavy resistance (The things beneath my floorboards fly, might imply bullets scattering near him), almost won as they cornered the enemy in (I'll never let them out); Forth stanza is probably this soldier having woke up from the two stanzas as a recurring nightmare. Finally slept again, had nightmares of walking through fields of dead civilians and soldiers, examining them for familiar faces. Fifth stanza describes the first moments they got air-dropped into the field, and they all had to make comfortable in foreign homes; Sixth stanza is significant in describing all the money channeled into financing the war. While this particular platoon of soldiers are littered with injury (sometimes I hear "the lead in our guts" actually), but they're now hard boiled from previous conflicts; Small part after this is self explanatory: no matter how many died, it is still about winning the war. Ether here might be literal chemical, or Plato's aether, both probably used to denote courage. Last stanza goes back to the time of the airlift, before they were dropped into the battlefield, with emotions attached to the moment.

The song is good because it is left to a wide range of interpretations.