I can't help but feel that this song is exploring something a bit larger than the dynamics of a particular relationship - I honestly think, and this might be a big stretch, that this song is grappling with "hipster" culture.
Admittedly, I don't have a whole lot to base this off of, other than the lyric "This culture's a disease/when you see it through lights." Liars are self-aware; I think that's evidenced by the fact that they've consistently worked to defy easy categorization of their output as a whole. The culture Angus Andrew sings about is likely to be one he knows, and one he's implicated in. A culture that sees itself reflected best in the icy electronica Liars are working with here. A culture essentially based on irony and, therefore, completely unsustainable in the long term. What happens when the hipsters grow up? Will they ever?
I think this song plays out as the realization by someone implicated in that culture that there's real fear at the heart of all that nonchalant pseudo-nihilism. "They spiral down, they come back, a dead end, again and again and again and again." The culture's ironic celebration of its own vapidity isn't going to do it for the singer anymore; the vapidity has finally become scary. He wants out, and he wants it out of him. You can hear how it's affected him in those languid vocals - that "fuck-it" spirit is now being turned into a kind of resigned anxiety. He has to "bloody himself awake" to make something of himself; he has to crawl out of the numbing boredom of fake friends and bland hedonism and live in a way that lets him feel good about himself.
No matter what, disillusionment is a big theme in this song. In that spirit, the title No. 1 Against the Rush has got to be meant ironically; it's that self-important self-designation as someone who goes against the grain that the singer is exposing as blind.
I can't help but feel that this song is exploring something a bit larger than the dynamics of a particular relationship - I honestly think, and this might be a big stretch, that this song is grappling with "hipster" culture. Admittedly, I don't have a whole lot to base this off of, other than the lyric "This culture's a disease/when you see it through lights." Liars are self-aware; I think that's evidenced by the fact that they've consistently worked to defy easy categorization of their output as a whole. The culture Angus Andrew sings about is likely to be one he knows, and one he's implicated in. A culture that sees itself reflected best in the icy electronica Liars are working with here. A culture essentially based on irony and, therefore, completely unsustainable in the long term. What happens when the hipsters grow up? Will they ever? I think this song plays out as the realization by someone implicated in that culture that there's real fear at the heart of all that nonchalant pseudo-nihilism. "They spiral down, they come back, a dead end, again and again and again and again." The culture's ironic celebration of its own vapidity isn't going to do it for the singer anymore; the vapidity has finally become scary. He wants out, and he wants it out of him. You can hear how it's affected him in those languid vocals - that "fuck-it" spirit is now being turned into a kind of resigned anxiety. He has to "bloody himself awake" to make something of himself; he has to crawl out of the numbing boredom of fake friends and bland hedonism and live in a way that lets him feel good about himself.
No matter what, disillusionment is a big theme in this song. In that spirit, the title No. 1 Against the Rush has got to be meant ironically; it's that self-important self-designation as someone who goes against the grain that the singer is exposing as blind.