Sleep Spent

A Lyrical Analysis of We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes

Death Cab for Cutie has been one of my favorite bands for many years. Their music is consistently great. Excellent. Exceptional. Top-drawer. I even liked Plans when I gave it a chance.

I first got hooked on the band with their 2001 release, The Photo Album. After that, I went back and fell hopelessly in love with the album before that, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes. The lyrics are splendid. Here is my attempt at an analysis of them.

This is a Work in Progress!

Major Themes

This is an album about failed relationships. The most common theme to be aware of is “relationships as gainful employment.”

1. Title Track

Left uninspired by the crust of railroad earth that touched the lead to the pages of your manuscript.

He meets a girl at a party and we learn that she is a writer. The conversation goes something like this:

Ben: “So what do you do?”

Girl: “Oh, I’m a writer”

Ben: “Yeah? What have you written?”

Girl: “Well, you can have a look at my manuscript...”

But it’s far from professional: it’s written in pencil.

I took my thumb off the concrete and saved up all my strength to hammer pillars for a picket fence.

He is leaning back on his hands on a deck or driveway (something concrete) before sitting up to talk to this girl. Before they speak, he’s smitten. He even sees them getting married and settling down together in a house with a picket fence.

It wasn’t quite what it seemed: a lack of pleasantries (my able body isn’t what it used to be). I must admit I was charmed by your advances: your advantage left me helplessly into you.

As much as he may be into her, she is pushing pretty hard. Complicating things is that she is far better looking than he is. Ben is a good enough looking guy, but he’s no Brad Pitt; he feels at a disadvantage with her because she is so much more attractive. The fact that she would even be interested in him makes him think he should go for it.

Talking how the group had begun to splinter and i could taste your lipstick on the filter...

Talk turns to the fact that all the couples at the party seem to have gone off to make out. They’re sharing a cigarette.

I tried my best to keep my distance from your dress but call-response overturns conviction every time. My memory cannot recall: a wave of alcohol. We shared a cigarette and shaved the hours off.

He’s still trying to fight the urge but it’s a losing battle. He’s been testing the waters and she’s definitely receptive, so he’s throwing caution to the wind. They are getting progressively drunker as the night goes on, and they don’t drift apart but stick by each other.

Lushing with the hallway congregation, my best judgement signed its resignation.

Did he mention that they’re drunk? “My best judgement signed its resignation” is perhaps my favorite Death Cab lyric. It just speaks volumes.

I rushed this. We moved too fast, and tripped into the guestroom.

The song ends with Gibbard kicking himself for rushing things. He’s concerned about their future together, if it will be complicated by their first experiences together.

Note on the title: The title of the record is We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes. Since this is the title track, it has the same title. So both Ben and the girl know that they’re being less than cautious, but they decide to go for it anyway.

2. The Employment Pages

This song has a very contented feel to it. (Orgasms will do that to you.)

We spread out and occupy the cracks in the urban streets. Idle now: I rearrange the furniture as you sleep.

Afterwards, they separate. Before he leaves, and while she’s sleeping, he puts the furniture of the guestroom back in place.

It’s so appropriate: the way we amplify the sound, and then the neighbors drop by and they ask [us] to turn it down again...

I think this is meant to be taken literally. They are at a party after all.

We spread out and everyone is frightfully more aware. So impressed: the cocktail politics and obscure details.

When he gets back to his friends, everyone knows what he and the girl have been up to. His friends are asking him about it. They’re impressed that he was able to get her into bed.

And it was true that I was truly failing. But you were gone and I was home calling around but nothing was found worthwhile.

This is the middle eight of the song. There is a change in the music which also represents a change in time. These lines take place later on, perhaps the next day. He takes stock of his life, “employment”-wise, and realizes that he really needs a fulfilling relationship that will last. Ben tries a couple of the numbers he got at the party, but nothing pans out. It’s OK, though, because he resolves to try to make up for rushing things at the party with the girl he slept with.

We spread out and occupy the cracks in the urban streets. Idle now: I rearrange the furniture as you sleep.

In the coda, Ben revisits the memory of the time they spent together and how it ended.

It’s important to note here that he likes this girl. For him, it wasn’t just a one night stand. He’s a bit concerned, but willing to make an effort to fix things up if he can.

Note on the title: The title of this song is important to the theme of relationships as work. If you’re looking for a job (a girlfriend cum wife), what is a party but a bunch of potential employers?

3. For What Reason

Everything about this song is seriously pissed-off. He is not happy about the way he got played by the girl at the party. He liked her, and hoped more could come of it, but it turned out she was dating someone.

This won’t be the last you’ll hear from me: it’s just the start. I hope that he keeps you up for weeks like you did to me.

He’s hoping that she gets hurt by her boyfriend/fiancee as bad as she hurt him.

I will hold a candle up to you to singe your skin. Brace yourself: I’m bent with bitterness you can’t foresee.

The hostility is tough to comprehend until you realize that he had really built this girl up. She was more than just another fling. She represented his future, the way out of being alone. He was prepared for it to not work out between them, maybe, but he did NOT expect to find out that she was dating someone and hadn’t had the decency to tell him.

When your apologies fail to ring true, [you’re] so slick with that sarcastic slew of phrases like “I thought you knew,” while keeping me in hot pursuit.

He was wondering why she was pushing so hard. Turns out, she’s dating someone. She tries to wriggle out of it with that tired line, “Oh, I thought you knew.” He is not impressed.

Tracing the plot finds skin touching skin (absence follows).

This is a much more cynical view of what happened in the first song. They got it on and then she left. There was nothing there, though he thought there was.

In the end I win every time as ink remains. Sour tastes prevail as you play back the tape machine.

The only leverage he has is that he has a band. He vows to get back at her by writing about how she screwed him over. And every time she hears the song she’ll know it’s about her. (How devilish!)

When your apologies fail to ring true, [you’re] so slick with that sarcastic slew of phrases like “I thought you knew,” while keeping me in such hot pursuit.

Tracing the plot finds skin touching skin (absence follows).

Note on the title: This one is pretty clear, I think. He doesn’t understand why she didn’t tell him, why she got his hopes up. What was the reason? There was none, unfortunately. She was just a bitch.

4. Lowell, MA

First things first.

You’ve been forewarned of the shakedown. Opinions stamped on the pulp of the tabloid newsstand gossip that’s stacked at your door. You swallowed the last of free MA. Car starts, four windows lowered away: last views of cityscapes crumbling.
Skyscrapers sink into the ground. All static, no noise: turn the radio down. Those bandwidth signals can’t reach this far.
Don’t go holding out on me now (I thought that you had come to expect more...)

5. 405

I took the 405 and drilled a stake down into your center, and stated that it’s never ever been better than this. I hung my favorite shirt on the floorboard, wrinkled up from pulling pushing and tasting.
You keep twisting the truth that keeps me thrown askew.
Misguided by the 405 ’cause it led me to an alcoholic summer. I missed the exit to your parents’ house hours ago. Red wine and the cigarettes: hide your bad habits underneath the patio.

6. Little Fury Bugs

You’ll discover that casual friends kept notes in their pockets to remember your name. And all thses places we went to see sights just gave them excuses to get into the game.
There’s a look in the faces tonight that’s untrustable as the hope that you’ll never return in a while. But you’re always on time, so...
Sleeping soundly: the back of the car felt more like a home than I would ever have thought. And through the evening the engine kept on until we hit Chicago and decided to stop.
There’s a look in the faces tonight that’s untrustable as the hope that you’ll never return in a while. But you’re always on time, so...

7. Company Calls

This song and the next one are very closely connected and must be analyzed together to truly be understood.

I’ll take the best of your bad moods and dress them up to make a better you, ’cause all the company calls amount to one paycheck.

He’s dating a girl, and he’s trying to convince himself that she’s not as bad as he feels like she is. Why? Because all the dating you do you in your teens and twenties results in only one marriage. It’s the payment for all the work you put into dating. And I think Ben is feeling pressure to get married soon.

I’d squeeze a heart through my fingertip but I type too slow to make expressions stick. And it’s like TV with a microchip.

Ben is talking with her over IM, but he doesn’t type very fast. He can’t respond quickly enough to the flood of textual emotion. Consequently, he feels like he’s watching television — he has no control, he’s simply watching things unfold.

Set your sights to sink the party line, ’cause it’s so tired. Set your sights! Destroy this mock-shrine, ’cause it’s so tired.

Ben is feeling like it’s time to acknowledge that things aren’t going well. In fact, he’s pretty pissed off at the situation and at her.

Let’s cut our losses at both ends and aim your car away from all our friends, leaving the dishes stacked in the sink.

But he proposes that they give it one more shot, leaving right away and going on a trip together away from their friends.

Set your sights to sink the party line, ’cause it’s so tired. Set your sights! Destroy this mock-shrine, ’cause it’s so tired.

I’d keep a distance ’cause the complications cloud it all, and mail a postcard sending grettings from the eastern bloc.

Ben needs some space and goes to Europe, hoping that he will be able to clear his mind and figure out if things can ever work out between them. Is she the problem or is it life that’s getting in the way?

Synapse to synapse: possibilities will thin or fade.

Unfortunately, the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that things really aren’t going to be OK.

Your wedding figurines: I’d melt so I could drink them in.

He resolves to have her in the only way he can, by ingesting the plastic representation of her that appears on her wedding cake when she eventually gets married. This doesn’t sound at all healthy, but love can lead to some pretty deranged choices.

I’ll take the best of your bad moods and dress them up to make a better you, ’cause all the company calls amount to one paycheck. Set your sights to sink the party line, ’cause it’s so tired. Set your sights! Destroy this mock-shrine, ’cause it’s so tired. Set your sights to sink the party line, ’cause it’s so tired. Set your sights! Destroy this mock-shrine, ’cause it’s so tired.

Note on the title: Perhaps the company called and gave him the heave-ho. Or perhaps it’s talking about all the calls he’s received from them (meaning her).

8. Company Calls (Epilogue)

Where the previous song was written about the breaking up process, and was therefore more angry-sounding, this song takes place a while later. She has moved on and found someone else to marry, and Ben is morosely remembering how he felt as their relationship was disintegrating, and what he had promised himself he would do.

Synapse to synapse: the possibility’s thin. I’m dressed up for free drinks and family greetings on your wedding date.

This lyric echoes “possibilities will thin or fade” in the previous song. Except, this time, the possibility of Ben getting her back is not thinning, but already thin. Ben acknowledges that he isn’t going to get her back, without altogether giving up hope.

The figures in plastic on the wedding cake that I took were so real.

In Company Calls Ben tells himself that when this girl does get married, he will take the figurines from the wedding cake so he can melt and drink them. But that was a long time ago, and he isn’t that passionate (read: irrational) any more. He does steal the figurines but instead of following through, he just examines them and notes their likeness to the newlyweds.

And I kept a distance: the complications cloud the postcards and blips through fiberoptics, as the girls with the pigtails were running from little boys wearing bowties their parents bought them: “I’ll catch you this time!”

He doesn’t want to go up to her because of their history; it would be awkward. He remembers the postcards he sent and the discussions they had (either over IM or over the phone). The children innocently chasing each other at the wedding are allegorically acting out the relationship between Ben and the bride.

Crashing through the parlor doors, what was your first reaction? Screaming, drunk, disorderly: I’ll tell you mine.

Ben has been keeping his distance, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t thinking about what he’d like to do. What would happen if he got drunk and worked up the courage to tell her how he really felt? He wants to know what she would think of him doing that, but there is a double meaning to “first reaction”: Ben is also talking about the first time he met her.

You were the one but I can’t spit it out when the date’s been set. The white routine to be ingested inaccurately.

Ben decided it wasn’t going to work out between them a long time ago. The previous song is about him coming to grips with that. But when he first met her, he had it all figured out. They were going to get married; she was the one he had been looking for all this time. Of course, he doesn’t actually say this, because it’s obvious that that would only further complicate things at her wedding.

By the way, isn’t that last sentence just a beautiful description of a wedding?

Synapse to synapse: the sneaky kids had attached beer cans to the bumper so they could drive up and down the main drag. People would turn to see who’s making the racket. It’s not the first time.

This is an allusion to how rocky their relationship was when they were still dating.

When they lay down the fish will swim upstream and I’ll contest but they won’t listen when the casualty rate’s near one hundred percent, and there isn’t a pension for second best or for hardly moving...

There are three analogies going on here: fish spawning, sex and employment. When salmon spawn, they travel a great distance against enormous odds to lay their eggs. Many salmon die before they get there to lay their eggs, and the rest die soon after. This is quite similar to sperm, who are incredibly small and need to travel through the uterus and partway up a fallopian tube to find and attempt to fertilize the egg. Both of these Herculean tasks are compared to the job of finding a wife. Or, more precisely, to getting a woman to divorce the man she married for someone she used to date.

Crashing through the parlor doors, what was your first reaction? Screaming, drunk, disorderly: I’ll tell you mine. You were the one but I can’t spit it out when the date’s been set. The white routine to be ingested inaccurately.

Note on the title: As notied earlier, this song is called an epilogue for a reason.

9. No Joy In Mudville

Last night I dreamt that I was you. I was dressed all in black with dark glasses and attitude.

Ben has a dream about his friend who is living in New York City. In the dream, Ben is extremely “cool.” After all, his friend is living in New York; if Ben was to visit and live with his friend for awhile, he imagines he would become part of the hipster scene he has heard about.

Such a pose I could simply not hold through days in a northern town that I had once called a home.

Clearly, Ben is not going to be able to reach this fantastic state of cool in his native Bellingham, Washington.

Your studies of fringe New York streets: I was reading the pavement in every word you would speak. To a “brownstone up three flights of stairs” and it’s on...

When he speaks with his friend on the phone, Ben gets directions to the place he’s going to be staying. It was so clear to Ben that his friend is a New Yorker, familiar with the streets and comfortable living in the big city. And he’s actually going to stay with him. It’s on.

Buying drinks for the poets upstate, this southern corruption towed you down the interstate, and they all said that you were the king of a gloomy disruption that surfaced when you would sing.

This is more about the dream he had last night. He takes a trip to upstate New York with his friend, and the poets they go to see are very complimentary of his friend’s musical stylings. (This is exactly the sort of thing that was parodied in So I Married An Axe Murderer.) It’s all extremely hip.

This town simply cannot compete so I’m packing my Bullets and Silvertones and heading east to a “brownstone up three flights of stairs” and it’s on...

Ben’s mind has been made up, and he decides to go to New York. “Bullet” is a type of guitar amp made by Fender and Silvertone is a brand of guitar. Ben is heading to New York with his instruments, clearly intending to stay for awhile.

If I could have (had) my way this year would bridge ‘66 (again?)

Here he tells us what he imagined it would be like in New York. It would be the 1966 hipster scene all over again.

Trust fund hipsters were casing the room chock full of amphetamines. The overturned kick drum boom set the pace with incomparable cool.
And if the tempo was lousy it was lost on all but you...

But that’s not what happens. He gets there and finds only a party with lousy music and pathetic guests. What’s worse, no one seems to realize this except Ben and his friend. They’re total outsiders. Ben’s friend probably found this party to try to appease him, but instead of being impressed, Ben comes away disappointed and disenchanted.

There is a bit of irony to the statement that “the tempo was lousy,” as this is certainly the slowest song on the album. If you think that, though, Ben wants you to know that you’re the only one who does. :-)

Your studies of fringe New York streets: I was reading the pavement in every word you would speak. To a “brownstone up three flights of stairs” and it’s on...

Note on the title: “There is no joy in Mudville” is an idiom that comes from the poem “Casey At The Bat” by Ernest L. Thayer. Bartleby.com says: “In general, the expression is used to describe any disappointment.” Ben is disappointed that the hipster life his friend is living isn’t all he had imagined it would be, all it was in 1966.

10. Scientist Studies

What ghosts exist behind these attic walls? There’s got to be a simpler explanation, ’cause I scrimped and I saved just to find that they’ve been splicing my inventions. Cold skin and bones and this latitude: we ain’t payin’ until the heat comes through. So you slept in a stocking cap and wool scarf.
Promises of payment were upon your shoulders constantly, but don’t forget to entertain ’cause this is your first defense.
A four-year offense to the devoted type. I may have got an invitation but I wasn’t invited. But I thought that this meant something more than broken hearts and new addictions. We’ll leave our sins within the carpet twine. Our bodies will dissolve the chemicals in due time.