Top Notch

I believe this song is about the twin deaf brothers Marc and Eddy Verbessum from Belgium. They were told by their doctor that they would be going blind as well so they asked to be euthanized (this is legal in Belgium) and they found a doctor that would go along with their wish. Normally this is only allowed if the condition is terimal or there is excruciating pain, but their reason was that they could not live with the fact that they would not be able to see each other; they relied on one another for everything and hardly knew anyone besides family.

The song may be about someone one of the band member(s) know as well, a known case of Marc and Eddy, or maybe just a made up story of a part of Marc and Eddy's childhood since the lyrics have "kids."

I think somewhere Andy Hull said this song was about twin brothers trapped in a building that was on fire. Like dancingjukebox says, maybe there was some inspiration from those twins in Belgium, seems like neither wants to live without the other and although the first twin thinks they should try and hide in the closet with (wet?) towels, the other says that nobody ever came looking for them before, why would they now? No idea about the third verse.

Very dark, awesome song though, can't wait to see them next weekend!

Whoever typed these lyrics up must have had the shittiest head phones or either listened through shitty laptop speakers.....really? That is what you hear?

I wonder if it involves child abuse. The lyrics are dark; I sure wish I new what inspired them to write this. It is a great song to listen to loud though!

I think the song is an exploration of the different ways in which we can cope with guilt.

In the beginning of the song, the two kids have done something wrong (killed someone, perhaps) and are trying to decide who is going to stay and take the blame for it and who is going to flee.

Instead, they decide that they'll both stay to cover up what they've done, dispose of the evidence and 'wait it out in the closet.' With the 'dead and buried underneath the yard' part - I'm not sure whether that is the children imagining what will happen to them if they are found to be guilty or whether they've killed someone and that is their proposed way of getting rid of the body.

Either way, they realise that burying things is not the way to fix things so they give themselves up. Things are still not fixed. Confessing doesn't take away the fact that they perpetrated the initial crime and they've learned things about themselves and each other through the experience that can't be unlearned ("That's a stain that won't dissolve" part).

The children come to understand that hiding guilt is not a solution but sometimes coming clean isn't either.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/14/deaf-belgian-twins-going-blind-euthanized/1834199/

First time i heard it i thought it was about coming out and how there's a choice to come out of the closet or not and the two paths if they do or don't come out. And if the kid do make that leap and come out the they are afraid they might be killed and forgotten or just forgotten in general. And that coming out is a stain that won't dissolve and that once you've come out of the closet there's 'no way to fix it'.

After researching those belgium twins though it seems much more likely thats it.

Two brothers, twins, are trapped in a burning building. They’re locked in an upper story room and their only hope of escape is to tie two towels together and choose one twin to lower the other out the window, to forsake it, leaving the other to burn; an ungodly decision.

One twin comes to the conclusion that neither should leave without the other, that they should wrap the towels around one and other and sit in the closet hoping for the best. His brother says that it will only result in them both being dead burred and forgotten; he disagrees with his brothers course of action and still believes one of them should escape.

Before the dispute is resolved somebody outside the room walks into a wall, giving themselves away, before this happened they believed it to be a ghost trapping them in the room. The twins plead for the murderer to give up, to let them escape.

In the song it refers to the twins as ‘deaf’, one of the defininions of deaf is ‘unwilling to listen’, that along with the fact the songs make reference to them hearing each other talk makes me think they aren’t actually deaf just misbehaving. I believe what has happened is a single mother, fed up with her misbehaving boys locks them in the top story and lights the house on fire. The mother stays in the house intending to commit suicide.

When she accidentally walks in to the wall she is appithetic to the boys finding out it was her that is behind all this and the song finishes on the line “all that I know there’s no way to fix it” which leads me to believer he mother doesn’t let them out the boys decided to stick together and burn up in the closet. That might be a little dark but I think with a song like this I can interperate it how I like and I like dark haha. Any questions feel free to ask

The song is about two brothers trying to escape a fire. We tried to create something that told less of an immediate story and caused more of a gut reaction. Something to be interpreted without laying it all out in front of you. It’s also quite terrifying. Like somebody was digging and found this VHS artifact in the ground.” – Andy Hull (Manchester Orchestra)

Can this song be about an introvert conversing with his/her inner self and realizing the struggle of coming out of the mind's 'closet'?