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After his family arrived in New Mexico, young James was unwilling to talk to anyone about his anxiety in case they felt bored or burdened by them.

Compare these lines with “Simple Song”:

I told you about all those fears
And away they did run
You sure must be strong
When you feel like an ocean being warmed by the sun

“Simple Song” is a tale of new love, which, although written earlier, deals with a later period in James' life. His willingness to share his problems reflect the confidence he gained in adulthood. It’s unsurprising that his 12 year old self didn’t feel comfortable talking about his feelings after having his world turned upside down.

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“Fantasy Island” uses flying to an imaginary island as a metaphor for running from your problems. Mercer sings of lost youth, and of a reluctance to burden his loved ones with his problems in case he bores them to death.

Musically, this is a synth-driven, layered track with a slight psychedelic tinge that reflects the fantastical theme.

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From the late 70s to the mid-90s, Britain’s Labour Party struggled to win General Elections due to perceived closeness to unpopular trade unions and the bloated public sector. In 1994, new leader Tony Blair rebranded the party as New Labour, embracing market reforms while remaining committed to social justice.

Under Blair, Labour won three consecutive General Elections and had huge popularity with the middle classes. The alternative was the Conservative Party, seen as both weak and cruel.

Despite their popularity, New Labour started to become disliked when Blair took Britain into the Iraq War. Today, “Blairite” is used as a slur by many on the Labour left, who see Blair as a traitor who betrayed their values (big government, high taxes, losing elections).

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This line, in its heavily-distorted glory, sounds like “fever rest” or “feverish” depending on what you hear. This is intentional and the phrase, like many Bon Iver songs, is imaginative.

A “fever rest” is a restless sleep brought on by a fever and can be accompanied by “fever dreams”, particularly intense and vivid dreams. This phenomenon is also catalyzed by the mental fatigue and delirium of a fever, thus the feeling that one is perpetually dreaming.

This relationship is like a restless sleep accompanied by these strange dreams; it is hard to know if one is awake or dreaming because there is much confusion and emotional upheaval.

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Many religions decorate their places of worship with religious scenes. For example, churches may have paintings of the crucifixion. An extremist may show these beautiful artworks to a trainee in an attempt to inspire them to kill themselves for their religion.

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Nicotine patches help people overcome their addiction to smoking. Nicotine gives you a warm feeling of calm and suppresses negative emotions. .22 may be referring to a dosage of nicotine given to those trying to give up smoking. They get 22mg every 24 hours.

El-P compares people high on nicotine to sedated farm animals. Regardless of whether you’re in prison like a battery chicken, or allowed to roam like a free-range animal, you’re still trapped by society.

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On the contrary, giving up our current lifestyle would be incredibly hard. Most of us simply wouldn’t be willing. The whole song serves as a commentary on how we wouldn’t be willing to accept this sort of revolution, even to save the planet.

This could be seen as a sister song to “Nothing But Flowers”, a song that Talking Heads frontman David Byrne wrote in response to Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”. Mitchell bemoaned the way they “paved paradise to put up a parking lot”; Byrne envisioned a horrible future where parking lots and other conveniences were given over to the wild and people had to catch rattlesnakes for dinner.

If we’re serious about fighting global warming, we have to do it without asking people to sacrifice very much.

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Humans have evolved to live on Earth. We need a planet with an atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen, stable seasons, plenty of liquid water, edible plants, and just the right strength of gravity. While there are surely plenty of planets that meet those criteria, we’ve got no easy way of getting to any of the others. This one will have to do.

The trash orbiting Earth is formally known as “space debris”. Over 170m bits of junk bigger than 1mm in diameter are orbiting the planet.

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The “endless green” is probably a natural landscape to which the two of them have escaped to be alone together.

The shiny black car could be a police car, but it’s more likely to be a hearse—in which case, the “endless green” is probably the grass of a large cemetery. It’s also possible that it’s just a car, but where’s the fun in that?

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In The Horse Whisperer, the titular character has an incredibly deep understanding of horse behavior. El-P has a similarly deep understanding of how to sexually arouse a woman.

At Christenings, babies are dunked in water. It’s also the Christian naming ceremony. When aroused, women’s vaginas release a lubricating fluid that causes a feeling of wetness. El-P’s cunnilingual skills are so great that he makes women get as wet as a Christened baby, and shout his name so loudly that the neighbors overhear.

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