I still can't figure this one out all the way but there's some really wonderful imagery here. They're probably the most interesting lyrics that SSRS has done.
I think it's about how the narrator's friends have all been crushed by city life and it can seem like the only escape is to numb yourself to all of it. Maybilene and Margaret Mary are crushed by the city, reduced to patheticness and puddles. Bronco Billy coolly lives on with his cocaine.
The city's work to crush his friends has made the narrator question himself, wondering who he is when his friends and past are taken from him. He feels guilty because he should have known this would happen. (see the underside)
He also wants to save them but is afraid that any attempt to help his friends might push them farther into their drug addictions or other problems they might be caught up in. Even a killer wouldn't dare attempt the heroic. He could so easily crush them as Gulliver almost crushed everyone in Lilliput.
Bronco Billy and Mother Nature are just trying to tell him that he needs to let it go and stop caring; just start thinking of the people on the streets as organ donors. Torn between his empathy and the ease of not caring, he asks for love and cigarettes.
I still can't figure this one out all the way but there's some really wonderful imagery here. They're probably the most interesting lyrics that SSRS has done.
I think it's about how the narrator's friends have all been crushed by city life and it can seem like the only escape is to numb yourself to all of it. Maybilene and Margaret Mary are crushed by the city, reduced to patheticness and puddles. Bronco Billy coolly lives on with his cocaine.
The city's work to crush his friends has made the narrator question himself, wondering who he is when his friends and past are taken from him. He feels guilty because he should have known this would happen. (see the underside)
He also wants to save them but is afraid that any attempt to help his friends might push them farther into their drug addictions or other problems they might be caught up in. Even a killer wouldn't dare attempt the heroic. He could so easily crush them as Gulliver almost crushed everyone in Lilliput.
Bronco Billy and Mother Nature are just trying to tell him that he needs to let it go and stop caring; just start thinking of the people on the streets as organ donors. Torn between his empathy and the ease of not caring, he asks for love and cigarettes.