Teardrinker

The entire double album titled \'Hushed and Grim\' that this track is from is said by Mastodon to be dedicated it to their friend & manager Nick John (who died in 2018 of pancreatic cancer) so this song to me seems to be about regrets & things left unsaid - once someone is gone, any chance to make peace with all of that goes away forever.

This song is about an abusive relationship with the “abuser” being the “teardrinker” who abuses the victim in the relationship and makes them cry a lot only to make up and repeat. They eventually realise what they are doing and try to break off the unhealthy relationship for the sake of the victim because even though they are abusive they do actually love them.

In the first verse, the abuser talks about what happens after a fight. After a fight the abuser has a bruised heart, and they know that even though this fight is over, and its “just one time before”, another fight will inevitably come again. The little voice inside the head is the voice that tells them to make up and continue the relationship (turn around again). After they make up, it seems like everything is better again, the anger and sadness fades and what they were fighting about wasn’t even that important (all appears to fade away).

Only after the fight the abuser realises how much pain they have caused the other and they feel a lot of shame for this. They continue on their daily lives and the victim doesn’t cry anymore and the abuser (the teardrinker) tries to forget about what they’ve done.

They second verse is about the abuser realising how bad they are to the other and they try to end the relationship for the sake of the other.

In the second chorus the perspective is different in that the pain is the pain of being broken up.

The last bit is just about the abuser telling how breaking off the relationship was hard and how they think about how they could have done things differently.