What I've read on their website is that the main guy sings a lot about two spies that interact and chase each other (the main woman, who is married to the main guy, sings about different stuff). Everything is fictional, and it seems that the stories told are not linear, so there is no sense of chronology. So now, I have a different understanding of this album. It's a bit like flipping channels during spy movie week, and discovering that each channel is a different, completely unrelated spy movie, but featuring the same two spies. This album features a lot of war and destruction, possibly started by these spies.
Based on this, I get two possible interpretations. In both, Spy 1 (first person) was sent to destroy a town where Spy 2 was hiding, in order to be sure Spy 2 is either killed or bogged down in the chaos, or perhaps to flush him out. The difference in the possible interpretations lies in the second verse--either Spy 2 is speaking about Spy 1 (and thus has possibly discovered the plan or that something will happen), or Spy 1 is justifying the destruction he causes in the first verse by referencing some atrocity that Spy 2 set into motion.
The last part seems to be figurative, relating to the cat-&-mouse game the spies are playing, and could be spoken by either.
What I've read on their website is that the main guy sings a lot about two spies that interact and chase each other (the main woman, who is married to the main guy, sings about different stuff). Everything is fictional, and it seems that the stories told are not linear, so there is no sense of chronology. So now, I have a different understanding of this album. It's a bit like flipping channels during spy movie week, and discovering that each channel is a different, completely unrelated spy movie, but featuring the same two spies. This album features a lot of war and destruction, possibly started by these spies.
Based on this, I get two possible interpretations. In both, Spy 1 (first person) was sent to destroy a town where Spy 2 was hiding, in order to be sure Spy 2 is either killed or bogged down in the chaos, or perhaps to flush him out. The difference in the possible interpretations lies in the second verse--either Spy 2 is speaking about Spy 1 (and thus has possibly discovered the plan or that something will happen), or Spy 1 is justifying the destruction he causes in the first verse by referencing some atrocity that Spy 2 set into motion.
The last part seems to be figurative, relating to the cat-&-mouse game the spies are playing, and could be spoken by either.