I am a firm believer that the best songs are the ones that you don't always like at first. Once I got to listening to this one though, the intensity with which she sings it made me love it.
It seems to me like an emotional cataclysm leading to the revelations in "pneumonia." I think it's about a woman (possibly autobiographical) who, filled with emotions and turmoil, has gone to a place where she can be alone (to me, it seems to suggest some kind of mountain or cliff) and try to release these feelings which have snowballed inside her and built up like steam in a tea pot. Perhaps the "beast" alluded to is her inner chaos which is trying to get out. "vertebrae by vertebrae" seems to make sense with the song because it frequently refers to standing tall to look forward (perhaps metaphorically, attempting to see how there can be a future with all of these feelings exerting so much pressure on her). Notice how the song has no lyrical or musical resolution in the end. I think that that fact, the rain beginning on track 6, and the similar instrumentation insinuates that this song and pneumonia were meant to be taken as a set. Perhaps pneumonia was meant to be advice for the character in "Vertebrae by Vertebrae." That seems plausible, at least to me.
I am a firm believer that the best songs are the ones that you don't always like at first. Once I got to listening to this one though, the intensity with which she sings it made me love it.
It seems to me like an emotional cataclysm leading to the revelations in "pneumonia." I think it's about a woman (possibly autobiographical) who, filled with emotions and turmoil, has gone to a place where she can be alone (to me, it seems to suggest some kind of mountain or cliff) and try to release these feelings which have snowballed inside her and built up like steam in a tea pot. Perhaps the "beast" alluded to is her inner chaos which is trying to get out. "vertebrae by vertebrae" seems to make sense with the song because it frequently refers to standing tall to look forward (perhaps metaphorically, attempting to see how there can be a future with all of these feelings exerting so much pressure on her). Notice how the song has no lyrical or musical resolution in the end. I think that that fact, the rain beginning on track 6, and the similar instrumentation insinuates that this song and pneumonia were meant to be taken as a set. Perhaps pneumonia was meant to be advice for the character in "Vertebrae by Vertebrae." That seems plausible, at least to me.