This song may be my least favorite off of the new album. A little too drawn out it seems. The theme of the song is major depression based on the lyrics and tone of the music. The speaker in the song has lost his purpose and direction in life. The use of the words "looking" and/or "searching" in nearly every stanza shows this loss of direction.
In the first two stanzas, he experiments with drugs to soothe his pains to let his "bones melt away". But, the drugs didn't work for him because he gets "stranded" and his heart becomes like a "hand grenade". In the next four stanzas, the speaker continues his wandering for various things to give him satisfaction or to "carry his senses away." Despite the fact he's got wages to buy himself "anything he needs", he wants to be "washed away (suicide?/major life change)".
In the 7th stanza, he faces the belief that he has lost himself completely, so "nobody's there" in his head.
The speaker might experience the most pain in the last stanza. There's a voice calling for him that needs him, but the speaker has placed himself so far away from the rest of the world within his own misery. If he does kill himself, the speaker will have to deal with the fact that there was someone that needed him to live, but he failed that person to end his own suffering.
I think it's possible this is another tribute song to Elliott Smith. It could be Beck's attempt to sympathize with the mindset that Smith must have had to live with in his final days.
This song may be my least favorite off of the new album. A little too drawn out it seems. The theme of the song is major depression based on the lyrics and tone of the music. The speaker in the song has lost his purpose and direction in life. The use of the words "looking" and/or "searching" in nearly every stanza shows this loss of direction.
In the first two stanzas, he experiments with drugs to soothe his pains to let his "bones melt away". But, the drugs didn't work for him because he gets "stranded" and his heart becomes like a "hand grenade". In the next four stanzas, the speaker continues his wandering for various things to give him satisfaction or to "carry his senses away." Despite the fact he's got wages to buy himself "anything he needs", he wants to be "washed away (suicide?/major life change)".
In the 7th stanza, he faces the belief that he has lost himself completely, so "nobody's there" in his head.
The speaker might experience the most pain in the last stanza. There's a voice calling for him that needs him, but the speaker has placed himself so far away from the rest of the world within his own misery. If he does kill himself, the speaker will have to deal with the fact that there was someone that needed him to live, but he failed that person to end his own suffering.
I think it's possible this is another tribute song to Elliott Smith. It could be Beck's attempt to sympathize with the mindset that Smith must have had to live with in his final days.