Teeth

I agree with Sno that it's about being in a relationship with a complicated person... someone very emotional, maybe unbalanced, overbearing and powerful, and feeling like they're just sucking all the spirit and strength out of you until you can no longer remember who you are.

the bends in your brain and your elaborate pain makes me tired- the person seems to indulge in his depression, making life so needlessly complicated and tiring her out...

as an old balloon i hold my breath- she's keeping in all her own emotions and thoughts trying to deal with this overbearing person, like a balloon which, if it lets go of the air, will just fly away.

like a penance paid too soon and with too much eagerness- she is with the person out of love, eager to please, but it feels like a punishment...

to know what is true when air is changed by you makes it hard- he is so moody, keeps changing the air, may be pleasant one day and too much to handle the next... making it hard to just leave...

the rain....overwhelming emotions...

the last verse...she wants to escape and be herself again, be free from this person and his problems... salt may refer to her tears- they used to be her own, but this person demanded all her strength so she couldn't show her emotions... she'd had her teeth bared for battle, she had been strong and determined with her own plans, but love lost made her lose sight of all that and made her forget herself.

woah this song, to me, seems so sad - I mean it seems to be about a relationship broken up but now that I'm reading it again I can feel that it's more so about a relationship holding her back - or a person holding her back from doing what she wants/needs to do.... "there's something I should say but I can't get my head around the bends in your brain" --- she wants to say it to the person but who ever it is is just such a complicated person that you can't ever work out their reactions so your better not to say anything.

"like a penance paid too soon with too much eagerness" -nobody ever wants to pay penance but and certainly nobody could be possibly eager to do so

"Put me back in the bottle where the sea meets the sun when the bones and their rattle don't mean anything to no-one" -- this part I feel is that she wants to go back to the beginning when things meant nothing - they just were - she could be who she really was without judgment

---the more I get into writing about this song the more complicated it's becoming - I bet nothing I wrote above makes any sense but meh!

"i don't know where it comes from where to go when the rains come when the rain.." these lyrics are actually the most amazing! in my opinion I can see "the rains" as being like a sadness in her - and she doesn't understand why she feels that way but she does and she doesn't know what to do with this sadness either... then again it could be about anything lol!

this song is so beautiful and it makes me want to live in it, just wrap myself in its beauty.

This song seems clearly influenced by the time she spent with Damien Rice. Maybe it is about him? (No, probably not). But it seems more like his style than the other songs I've heard of hers. Venn Diagram and An Ocean and a Rock and Lille are nothing at all like Damien's music, but in this song I can possibly hear his influence on her a little. When you work with somebody as genius as Damien Rice it would be hard not to be influenced by him a little, but in many ways Lisa is a superior lyricist in my opinion.

I love the emotion that erupts in this song towards the end. The lyrics and they way they are sung emulate what she is feeling perfectly.

I think this means she is aggressive, out-spoken and prepared to end the relationship but when it comes to it she is the complete opposite because she loves him too much x

could "bones and their rattle" mean skeletons in the closet?

This song is the only song I have heard that perfectly describes, with a few exceptions, what it is like to be a loved one of someone suffering from depression. As the young daughter of a father with depression, I can only observe his situation and pray. It is a tiring, heartbreaking situation. All I want to do when he enters a depressed state is to be put "back in the bottle where the sea meets the sun," back to a time early in my childhood when he didn't have depression and things were happy, innocent, and simple. Where "the bones and their rattle" did not phase my father, did not send him into crisis mode.

I actually think she's talking about Damien rice. What a pity