“When I sat down on the bed next to you, you started to cry. Said maybe if I leave, you’ll want me to come back home. Maybe all you need is to leave me alone. At least that’s what you said.
Your irresistible when you get mad. Isn’t it sad – I’m immune. You thought it was cute for you to kiss my purple black eye, even though I caught it from you, I still think were serious. At least that’s what you said.”
From the outset, the hushed tone portends violence. The domestic landscape is populated with tears, beds, anger, hurt.Emotional chaos is afoot. We enter into the quiet in the middle of the storm. The immediate sonic tension is atypical in Wilco's body of work. Where before a sonic blitzkreig lurched forward to destroy expectations, i.e. Misunderstood, Sunken Treasure, etc..., here the provocation is conspicuously absent.
The lyrics are resigned. Presenting a semi lucid moment where violence momentarily purchases a lull. A truce in the cycle of love and violence, ownership and desire, love and hurt. The lyrics are as succinct as the respite from violence is long.
Uncertainty, equivocation, dissonance, yield to furious eruptions of violence - explosions outlined in vicious aural circles of noise. Again and again and again the sonic pallet frenetically builds to a deliver a near fatal blow, before momentarily ebbing – only to careen off the still smoldering hostility and launch anew into an even more spectacular demonstration of hostility. Hurt and sick, the pair thrash about crazily, using their love knowledge to inflict fatal wounds. Except only the relationship dies.
Eventually the madness can no longer be sustained and the frenzy crashes horrifically upon itself before tiredly staggering away.
