„Regret“, ein klasse Lied von dem Album „Get To Heaven“, hat mich zu dieser Band geführt und eigentlich wollte ich dieses posten. Doch „No Reptiles“ hat mich mit diesen Zeilen in seinen Bann gezogen.

It’s alright to feel like a fat child in a pushchair
Old enough to run
Old enough to fire a gun

Das ganze Album ist von Selbst- und Gesellschaftskritik durchzogen. So hier ein Ausschnitt aus dem Interview mit Jonathan Higgs, Sänger und Hauptsongschreiber, über den Song „No Reptiles“:

It’s written as if I’m rejected from society just about to do something awful. I wrote that at a time when I was feeling quite separate from, even against, society as a whole. I was feeling quite hateful towards my own country and my own place in the world, and feeling like I didn’t really like Britain or what it stands for. I don’t necessarily feel like that all the time, but I do sometimes.

The song has this theme of fat pouring down the streets and clogging every hole – that’s how I was feeling about the general public, me included. We’re just this blobby, inactive, privileged, big, pale blob, and I wanted to use this metaphor of this massive fat-tsunami washing through the city streets and going into the gutters. That was how I felt; it was how I felt about a big do-nothing society that hadn’t changed. It all comes back to being fat really… it’s like one of the things that you just see; I’m kind of fat, and I don’t like that about myself.

A few of my friends have become conspiracy nuts in the past few years, and I flirted with that idea for a bit, but I realised that it’s really romantic to imagine a world run by reptiles with a super-evil plan masterminding eveything. It’s much scarier, and much more likely, that the people at the top are just fat, bald, old men, like soft-boiled eggs, that are just weak-willed, with no strong feelings (good or ill). They’re lily-livered and easily swayed and quivering and wobbling. To me, that’s a horrible thought, but it also makes me feel guilty: if I was at the top, would I be a weak-willed, quivering, chubby overlord?

In terms of the song’s darker stuff, with the line „I’m gonna kill a stranger“, there is also the follow up line: „So don’t you be a stranger…“, which obviously means don’t be a stranger, don’t leave me, don’t go away etc., and it that way it’s almost a cry for help. But then it also means ‚I won’t kill you… if you’re my friend‘. It’s got this double-edged feeling throughout. Then the song changes and I’m likening myself to a fat child in a pushchair, sort of helpless and inactive and no use to anyone in the world that needs help. I’m just idle, and no one wants to be idle, but we find ourselves in that position living in this country. We’re passive, and we just get out our phones and move on. I wanted to say that in a sharp, insulting way to maybe make people snap out of that, to make them nervous and embarrassed. It’s not horrifying, but it’s a bit cruel, and I wanted to be cruel to people listening, and to myself. But then I’m saying „It’s alright…“ so it’s again this weird accusatory-slash-helpful tone.

The song ends with me saying ‚just give me one night, one moment to feel like I’m on the right path‘, pleading to just feel like I am helping the world, that I’m not useless. I think people have definitely connected to that and that sentiment of not wanting to continue as a negative or passive force in the world.

und weil ich dieses Lied einfach liebe, hier noch „Regret“