While on the surface this song seems happy, there's an underlying sinister feel. It's almost as if the feeling of happiness is about to be taken over by a deep depression. Midway through the track, the spoken prologue gets repeated and is accompanied by a really dark riff. The innocent sounding story about the guy who reads the adolescent style, gossipy doodles and gets 'drawn in' takes on a spookier meaning. Does he become obsessed, jealous, possessive, paranoid even?
The song could well be about having a crush on someone, observing them from a distance and fantasising about what it would be like to be with them. Clearly the subject in the song is depressed, because the lyrics include the line 'you bring light in/to a dark place' - he's imagining this woman making him happy and washing away his despair. But as the song progresses, the darkness slowly seeps in, but subtly so...as implied by changes in the music.
Karl Hyde's a fantastic lyricist, a real original. His lyrics are poetic, containing vivid imagery...and often he expresses ideas in fragments - i.e. the sentences aren't finished or grammatical. He actually uses a stream of consciousness style, like the beat poets of the 1960s did. Also, he sometimes mixes his own words in with fragments of conversations he has overheard, and it may well be the case that the 'prologue' with the London girl in this track was actually taken from a real conversation. Also, it may be that this spoken part has no relation whatsoever to the rest of the song, and simply inserted for the fun of it, and to playfully lead listeners astray by getting them to speculate about its meaning. Also, the title 'Two Months Off' seems to have no relation to the subject matter of the song. It may have been arbitrarily chosen.
All in all though, a fantastic track.
While on the surface this song seems happy, there's an underlying sinister feel. It's almost as if the feeling of happiness is about to be taken over by a deep depression. Midway through the track, the spoken prologue gets repeated and is accompanied by a really dark riff. The innocent sounding story about the guy who reads the adolescent style, gossipy doodles and gets 'drawn in' takes on a spookier meaning. Does he become obsessed, jealous, possessive, paranoid even? The song could well be about having a crush on someone, observing them from a distance and fantasising about what it would be like to be with them. Clearly the subject in the song is depressed, because the lyrics include the line 'you bring light in/to a dark place' - he's imagining this woman making him happy and washing away his despair. But as the song progresses, the darkness slowly seeps in, but subtly so...as implied by changes in the music. Karl Hyde's a fantastic lyricist, a real original. His lyrics are poetic, containing vivid imagery...and often he expresses ideas in fragments - i.e. the sentences aren't finished or grammatical. He actually uses a stream of consciousness style, like the beat poets of the 1960s did. Also, he sometimes mixes his own words in with fragments of conversations he has overheard, and it may well be the case that the 'prologue' with the London girl in this track was actually taken from a real conversation. Also, it may be that this spoken part has no relation whatsoever to the rest of the song, and simply inserted for the fun of it, and to playfully lead listeners astray by getting them to speculate about its meaning. Also, the title 'Two Months Off' seems to have no relation to the subject matter of the song. It may have been arbitrarily chosen. All in all though, a fantastic track.