Going Under

Lyrics

This one was dropped from the vinyl release of Clutching At Straws, and I can kind of see why. It's not an album I'd say has a weak link, as such, but if it did, I suppose this would be it. It's not intrusive, it fits the album thematically and musically, but it adds nothing in particular to the experience either; it's just the band catching a breather after the loosely formed trilogy of the first three tracks before launching into the frantic midsection. It's very much a 'treading water' kind of affair, which I guess is kind of ironic, given the title.

The subject matter is fairly depressing; a resigned acceptance of a life that will never amount to anything worthwhile, and a resultant descent into alcoholism as something to pass the time, but it's a subject that's well covered elsewhere on the album, alternately bigger, louder, quieter deeper, more gracefully, and just generally more than it is here, so this one is left feeling a little redundant.

Nonetheless, taken on its own merits, it's rather a sadly beautiful examination of a broken man's psyche. The part that gets to me in particular is the way he starts off trying to find something to blame for his situation; "Can't you understand that the way things were planned/It never worked out so I just went crazy", but just two lines later he gives up on even that thin shred of dignity and admits "I ain't got no excuse and that's really the news". There's no rhyme or reason to it, sometimes people just stop caring. Sometimes people just stop.