To Tundra

I think this is quite possibly the best song on the album, but I'm not sure what it even means. It definitely seems to be making a comparison between nature and religion--something to the effect that those who look to nature for comfort and peace are more likely to find it, compared to those who seek the same thing via religion.

The line about the surgeon and his wife completely stumps me though.

I think it's

We fake our concern and speak softly as the surgeon Tells wife to cancel her plans

I think the song is also about death. Located behind the St. Nicholas church in Radstock, which this is probably a reference to, is a cemetery.

"With lilies bunched in our hands."

Lilies have an association with death.

"We fake our concern and speak softly as the surgeon Tells wife to cancel her plans"

My impression is that the surgeon is breaking the bad news to the wife--Telling her to cancel her plans. Maybe the individual in question isn't exactly dead, but is in a state of health-risk. And we, aren't particular to this bad news and don't really specifically care for the individual, but we do care for the wife. Thus we are faking our concern.

Can't stop listening to this song. It has the be the best thing LC! has composed.

I think this song is heavily referencing cremation.

And in a hazy day dream Our bodies married the stream And we grow down into pebbles and silt The water ran from the fields Until the oceans we filled And found the sea-bed the comfiest quilt There was more life in the weeds than in the few hundred seats

I think its talking about being sprinkled into the river which carries the ashes throughout nature which is serving the purpose of almost an after life. The end says "take a body to water take a body to tundra just take me with you as well"

wherever they plan to bury the dead is irreverent the significant other just wants to meet the same fate.

There's a continuing story – a saga, if you will. It all starts with "The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future" on Romance is Boring, which then moves to "Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State" on the same album – after that, "To Tundra" takes place, a whole album later. It's also possible that "Hate For The Island," which showcases a lot of similar themes, is a part of the series.

TSIAGPTTOTF (wow) introduces us to our protagonists – Gareth and the unnamed woman. It's shown that the woman, very obviously, is having various mental struggles. Between an eating disorder and an implied mental disorder that couples itself with bouts of depression (i.e. depression, bipolarity [1 or 2], many PDs, etc.), it also shows us her suicidal ideation. While never outright stated, 'this woman wants to die,' every single line about the sea – about how all [you] can hear is your lungs flood and your blood course – relates to death.

Coda is when the woman dies. It's hard to make out at first, but between the constant ties to the sea, the implication that she drowned, and our narrator's frustration over never getting to have /those moments/ (moments he clearly desired in TSIAGPTTOTF), it's safe to infer that she's lost. Either way, it's clear someone the narrator loves is dead – 'all the times I would've liked there to have been.' As was previously stated, however, with the ties to the sea and the drowning scenario... The only thing I can't fit in there is the burn mark. They may have chosen the 'sooner state,' aka Oklahoma, because it's relatively Southern ('best known left wrist, right finger through all the Southern states').

To Tundra is the funeral procession. It begins with church scenery and the narrator fantasizing about what he and the woman could – what he and the woman /should/ – be doing: just enjoying the moment together. He expresses a desire to hold her safe in his arms, then they immediately cut to him longing to merge with her in the streams. More water connections. The 'two' end up in the sea, making our connection all the way back to TSIAGPTTOTF again. It's then, clear-cut, the funeral. Transept, nave, etc., etc. The 'audience' are the attendees, and he's the applause. To analyze this further, the audience are simply the bodies – the vessels – and the applause is what makes them come to life and share their emotions regarding the act that has just been put on. He believes he's the only one there who's truly feeling something more than apathy about this woman. I've seen some people confused over the lyric about the surgeon ('we fake our concern and speak softly as the surgeon tells wife to cancel her plans'), but recall that in TSIAGPTTOTF, the woman's mom died by the hand of a surgeon ('at fourteen, her mother died in a routine operation from allergic reaction to a general anesthetic'). This could easily be a tie back to that. They could be telling her to cancel her plans to make room for the surgery, or it could be a parallel situation in which they'd known what was going to happen. Cancel her plans – cancel the plans for the rest of her life. It ends with him, once again, longing to join her as he asks to be taken to water alongside the body ('please take a body to water, take a body to tundra, just take me with you as well').

Hate for the Island could possibly be included in this mix, although it's not nearly as tied-in as the others. It does make /multiple/ connections to the sea (hell, it's talking about an island), but the story progression in the song is a bit harder to place. At the beginning, it's clear that the narrator is recalling some of his memories with this woman – most of which involved getting a bit of a buzz ('smoked the last of the weed that sent you insane [...] and as we smoke, you feared your neighbors might see'). It fits when you recall that the woman had dabbled in drugs, herself, after her mother's death ('spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions'). It then switches to present tense and implies that the woman was buried beneath the sand, literally or metaphorically, by expectations. It can be inferred that she drowned due to the following lyrics ('just a couple of hundred feet either side of sea level'), and it's also possible – here's where my primary source of uncertainty lies – that he drowned himself after her death and funeral. The entire second verse, he's talking about how he'll no longer be far from her – y'know, now that they've both been buried beneath the sea...

In summation, I believe this is all part of a saga.