CPR/Claws Pt. 2

I set up the recording rig for Paul Laxer to track Typhoon at Pendarvis Farm earlier this year and got to talk to Kyle a little bit. He's a great guy -- getting to know him seems to make his lyrics dig even deeper knowing his life.

I didn't ask him about this song or its meaning, but to me it seems to be about a widower of someone who had a drug addiction or another disease-related death. It plays on death in so many ways; as @milesaway said, Kyle has Lyme disease. However, I think his own thoughts bleed into the narration of a wife and her husband instead of intentionally directing to Kyle, because he is still alive.

"Your help is on the way/ Just sing yourself a song and wait" foreshadows a character looming over the death in the second verse. "Then the suffering, one way or the other/ It will go away" either through getting a fix to stop withdrawal suffering or an overdose (again, my interpretation).

"He lay down on the kitchen floor/ You struggled but you could not afford/ The weight." It sounds like the main character's lover passes out, she tries to carry him somewhere but can't lift him, or a metaphor for letting go. Then "Your help is on the way" could mean that the ambulance is coming and she just has to comfort herself in the meantime.

The lines before those seem to invoke a memory as she is living day-to-day: "It's quiet and you wake/ You make the bed for two you always make/ Though half empty from some days before." It seems clear someone is dead.

The rest of the song is so beautiful and powerful. The themes of death and forfeit seem to recur. Just my thoughts. :)

Kyle, as a young kid, nearly died of Lyme disease. He lived thanks to modern medicine and a kidney from his father. This is something I feel is necessary to know in order to understand the meaning behind a lot of his lyrics. Much of the lyrics in this song could be taken by themselves in relation to Kyle's close call with death. "I wanna live but I don't wanna live" could very well be his feelings he had when he was deathly ill. "since you have nothing to do with your hands, you might as well pray" shows the disparity he had when facing death. The first verse is what particularly gets me, it covers (as do much of Typhoon songs) the almost cathartic experience of suffering. "We'll suffer for as long as we can take, and then the suffering one way or the other, it will go away". Suffering will last as long as you live, but whether you're able to defeat suffering while alive or it's forced to go away when you die, it will go away. That's a very comforting thought. This song holds a lot of meaning for me, and is my favorite Typhoon song.

This song seems to be about suicide. The narrative remains the same, but the cause of death is suicide, judging from the line "we suffer for as long as we can take". Suicide is sometimes considered an escape.

"This marks a vulnerable part of me/ guess it runs in my family"

There's evidence depression and suicidal behavior is heritable. The Lyme disease angle doesn't fit with this line.

First and foremost what an amazing song from such an incredible band.To me this song is unmistakably in regards to suicide.The story is told through Kyle's distinguished remarkable voice. Now let's just say for the sake of argument that this song is about a man and his partner -a woman, she may even be his wife. The song begins with a woman waiting for help to arrive most likely an ambulance because her husband lay dying on the kitchen floor after an attempt at ending his life and by doing so, one way or another-this suicidal way-all of his suffering is finally going away. While this woman waited for help to arrive not knowing how to pass the time she thought-maybe sing a song? There then seems to be this unspoken knowledge of his suffering between the two of them and subsequently he had never made a promise to her that he wouldn't eventually make this suffering go away by killing himself.The suffering I believe is some type of mental illness that he had inherited. Some days later the woman wakes up quietly alone and makes the bed as always but the new empty spot made her struggle to bear the weight of that dreadful memory of days before where in a senseless moment-most likely a trigger pull or even maybe a wrist that had been cut, her husband's life had tragically ended. And now everything they had worked towards was taken away. It appears as though neither of them were religious and while the two didn't fear God, they still had a fear of something they couldn't quite explain and since she had nothing to do with her hands she might as well pray. When people are contemplating suicide one of the warning signs is that they get rid of all of their possessions whether they're sold or given away because those possessions will soon be of no use to them. That's exactly what he had done.This is the point in the song where he referances his inherited fire- that being the mental illness passed down to him through his genes. It seems as though another family member had taken their own life at a specific age, and he was vulnerable to the same outcome at that same age -give or take a few years. As he lay dying he had a moment to reflect that the friends he had throughout his life had also contributed to his misery and that's when he had first become aware of his suicide ideation in which he struggled with the fact that even though he wanted to live, he also didn't want to live.This thing is out there I don't know where it is; Death is looming but he doesn't know where. He's now waving the white flag-surrendering from his enemies.I imagine his enemies represents all of his suffering and misery and his suicidal thoughts. And even though he has surrendered and the fire has ceased- and being on death's doorstep he doesn't know why those enemies-those thoughts are still in his head, still digging their claws in him. Pretty powerful stuff. Bravo Typhoon 👏 Please keep more of these gems coming.