Sugar Boats Lyrics

Lyric discussion by sslotsky 

Cover art for Sugar Boats lyrics by Modest Mouse

This song would seem to be largely about injecting drugs.

"These veins of mine are now some sort of fuse, and when they light up and my mind blows up, my heart is amused."

Shooting up drugs would probably make one's veins light up and mind blow up. Can't think of what else would.

The meaning of the term "Sugar Boats" escaped me until just today as I was listening to 3rd Planet from M&A, where he says "our blood is just like the Atlantic." When he says, "the sugar boats on the Atlantic are fine," my guess is that the Atlantic is once again his blood, and the sugar boats are drugs, possibly cocaine since that is the most likely to be compared to sugar.

My Interpretation

@sslotsky I respectfully disagree. this song is about humanity and being a human being. If your interpretation of the songs leads you to it being about drug use that is fine but modest mouse lyrics are never that cliche. There is always more as you look deeper into it.

@joel101542 I can accept that this song is about more than just shooting up drugs, but there are a couple references that don't seem like they could be about much else. I could easily be wrong of course, but those lines I mentioned paint those pictures for me.

@joel101542 also I don't know how you can say that "their lyrics are never that cliche." First, I wouldn't say that making a metaphor for drug abuse is cliche. Fairly common maybe, but not the same thing IMO. Second, The Good Times Are Killing Me is completely about drug abuse, is it not? So why would he not allude to a topic metaphorically that he's written an entire song about? Just some thoughts that occurred to me. Interested to know what you think it's about specifically, as "humanity and being a human being" is pretty vague and doesn't say a...