This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
I run with all the water of the ocean
And seas evaporate to run with me
An Egret the color of emotion
Instead I can't leave my bed, so I listen, listen, listen
Never been to New York City, London, Paris, France
Or the currency exchange
I don't care what the going rate is
But I can taste blood on the air from miles away
And I don't care what my mother's maiden name is
It manifests as an itch on my face
Wasn't explained to me at all
They were radio waves
And now your satellites are holding your words in place
No hope if Michael's music never healed the human race
Leave me alone (but is that really what you're saying there?)
I don't know (and that's a card accepted everywhere)
And I keep telling myself oh there's nothing there
I keep telling myself oh there's nothing there
Come rest against the bark of a cedar
No motion so nobody sees her
A nest to protect us our methods failed but nature never left us
I don't know what I'm thinking about most of the time
How much is hunger and how much is mind?
Has everyone else lost their minds?
I don't know what I'm thinking about most of the time
And seas evaporate to run with me
An Egret the color of emotion
Instead I can't leave my bed, so I listen, listen, listen
Never been to New York City, London, Paris, France
Or the currency exchange
I don't care what the going rate is
But I can taste blood on the air from miles away
And I don't care what my mother's maiden name is
It manifests as an itch on my face
Wasn't explained to me at all
They were radio waves
And now your satellites are holding your words in place
No hope if Michael's music never healed the human race
Leave me alone (but is that really what you're saying there?)
I don't know (and that's a card accepted everywhere)
And I keep telling myself oh there's nothing there
I keep telling myself oh there's nothing there
Come rest against the bark of a cedar
No motion so nobody sees her
A nest to protect us our methods failed but nature never left us
I don't know what I'm thinking about most of the time
How much is hunger and how much is mind?
Has everyone else lost their minds?
I don't know what I'm thinking about most of the time
Lyrics submitted by weareteamwolf
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
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Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
God I love this song...the ElectricMysticalSoulVibration version is insanely epic! It seems to really convey the feeling better than the original(Just my opinion though)
There's a lot of great lines in here, such directness at times, such cryptic vagueness other times. And sometimes things seem to negate what had just been said or implied..
The first two lines are golden right?..and then 'an Egret'...is white, so this emotion is something pure I presume. But then this baffling conclusion: "Instead I can't leave my bed, so I listen"... I can't even guess what this is inferring, I'm very curious what other people think.
Everything is so much more powerful on the EMSV version, particularly this part:
Never been to New York City, London, Paris, France Or the currency exchange I don't care what the going rate is! But I can taste blood on the air from miles away And I don't care what my mother's maiden name is!!
Such a great example of "show, don't tell", in songwriting. It seems to infer so much, there's such directness/indirectness simultaneously somehow, Especially in the EMSV version there's such a restrained intensity in the way this part is sung. I guess to me its saying.. "I am not like YOU. I am not domesticated. I am not tame like you are. I don't know, and don't care about, and am certainly not a part of this post-postmodern 'civil'ization, of yours. Money? Hah! What would I need 'money' for?! I'm a wild animal! You're on the crowded noisy stock exchange floor in your monkey suit, slaving away for that dollar bill. living and dying on those ups and downs, getting pushed around and pushing your way through in the sea of other monkeys for your money.. really living the dream eh? Me? I'm effing free. I kill what I eat. Its real simple."
"And I don't care what my mother's maiden name is" ...definitely my favorite line in the whole song.
I don't care what my...mother's maiden name is... It seems so perfect as a last line after all the other clearer inferences of being untamed, being wild and apart from society. And in that context it gives me a lot of different feelings probably because it seems so vague to me that there's so much I've thought it might mean.
The most literal is probably "I don't care Who my family is in the world, what their 'status' is...their history is not mine"
But I tend to think how this is said, with such intensity.. it seems to somehow indicate savageness. In some way this makes me think about how, when one thinks about the fact that every girl is somebody's daughter, it makes you think twice about some things...about being so.. wild and savage with them...in certain ways.. So saying you don't care about your mothers maiden name...I dunno. It seems to give the feeling that there's no shame. They have no shame, that they're not afraid to be brutal and savage.. But I don't really know why it feels this way to me.