Staying Fat Lyrics

Lyric discussion by Whill 

Cover art for Staying Fat lyrics by Bloc Party

Obviously modernization, industry and so on. I think the arctic snow is about how before how having a freezer was done by extremely rich people keeping a box full of ice brought back from a strange land a few centuries ago, but is now commonplace.

"The sound keeps you hemmed to the past The walls are coming in again The streets grid alone from the door You gotta spin the fucking treadle..."

That verse reminds me a bit of TS Eliot's bleak views on the industrial revolution, especially the lines about the streets. A treadle was something in a mill at that time, so he's saying industry's gotta keep going. All about progress being made - synthetic overtaking natural, in the same way the early 20th Centry modernist poets said it.