Thanks to archive.org's Wayback Machine, I was able to find Doug's quotes about the song:
"Lyrics don't really mean much to me, so, you know, they don't really come from anywhere in particular. Lyrics for me are probably 90% just filler, just words for me to sing. When I write a song, first I'll write a melody and I'll have no lyrics for it and sometimes just the random thing that I sing when I'm making up the melody gets stuck and that becomes lyrics. With one of our new songs, "The Host," it had a lot to do with certain vowel sounds and making a lot of rhymes with the "I" sound in them. And the lyrics don't really mean much at all. So it's more to me how it comes across sounding than what it comes across meaning. Basically it's about finding something to fit the meter of the music."
OK, so the lyrics "don't mean much at all" instead of being completely meaningless. But not too much energy should be spent analyzing them. The only analysis I've seen of them is an article discussing the plight of indie rock after its heyday in the 90's, and the author believing the lyrics "Something is wrong, Something invisible is gone" were written to convey that that era is over and that Doug is mourning the loss of it.
Many people are confused by or don't like the placement of this song as Track 2 on the album, but I was quite happy it was given a prominent position.
Thanks to archive.org's Wayback Machine, I was able to find Doug's quotes about the song:
"Lyrics don't really mean much to me, so, you know, they don't really come from anywhere in particular. Lyrics for me are probably 90% just filler, just words for me to sing. When I write a song, first I'll write a melody and I'll have no lyrics for it and sometimes just the random thing that I sing when I'm making up the melody gets stuck and that becomes lyrics. With one of our new songs, "The Host," it had a lot to do with certain vowel sounds and making a lot of rhymes with the "I" sound in them. And the lyrics don't really mean much at all. So it's more to me how it comes across sounding than what it comes across meaning. Basically it's about finding something to fit the meter of the music."
OK, so the lyrics "don't mean much at all" instead of being completely meaningless. But not too much energy should be spent analyzing them. The only analysis I've seen of them is an article discussing the plight of indie rock after its heyday in the 90's, and the author believing the lyrics "Something is wrong, Something invisible is gone" were written to convey that that era is over and that Doug is mourning the loss of it.
Many people are confused by or don't like the placement of this song as Track 2 on the album, but I was quite happy it was given a prominent position.