Ok, I think its at least in part about the modern world and Canada. Wolf parade is a canadian band, and another one of their recent songs “forest green” also seems very much to be discussing Canada. As a canadian, I noticed some stuff: ‘Drove the dead further west until they ran out of land’ is likely the advance of settlers, or ‘the dead’ across a land, killing ecosystems, peoples, and maybe themselves in the process. ‘Top of the mountain to the rotten sand’ might be the oil sands of Alberta, descriptions of a kind of deadness seems to come also from their discussion on the ‘modern world’ hence one of their other songs.
[Edit: Elaborated on the colonialism aspect w/ lyric change]
Ok, I think its at least in part about the modern world and Canada. Wolf parade is a canadian band, and another one of their recent songs “forest green” also seems very much to be discussing Canada. As a canadian, I noticed some stuff: ‘Drove the dead further west until they ran out of land’ is likely the advance of settlers, or ‘the dead’ across a land, killing ecosystems, peoples, and maybe themselves in the process. ‘Top of the mountain to the rotten sand’ might be the oil sands of Alberta, descriptions of a kind of deadness seems to come also from their discussion on the ‘modern world’ hence one of their other songs.
[Edit: Elaborated on the colonialism aspect w/ lyric change]