Icon

Lyrics

It sounds extremely incomplete, (which may well be because it actually is, since it was rejected from inclusion on Afraid Of Sunlight by everyone but Hogarth, and relegated to a b-side to "Beautiful" instead - I don't know if they bothered to clean it up any for that, the band have tended to take a pretty lazy attitude with b-sides, I think) but I find that that actually works in its favour. It always gives me the feeling of drifting in and out of sleep, with that endlessly repeating flute and bass acting as the song that's stuck in your head that night, and Steve Hogarth's mumbled lyrics as the thoughts running around your head.

Some of those thoughts are pretty good ones, and hence bear repeating; "Even if the good old days were good/The past is a terrible place to live", others not so much; "A trick of dry ice/a trick of the dry eyes"? But I can forgive those, because they make for authentic stream of conciousness; not all of your thoughts can be winners. I like toast.

Personally, I think I'd have voted for inclusion on the album, I think it could slot in nicely between "Afraid Of Sunlight" and "Beyond You" without interrupting the album's flow, and the line from which the song gets its title, "Icon therefore I am", may not be quite as clever as it wants to be, but it does fit in pretty fabulously with the album's theme. Afraid Of Sunlight is all about the trappings of fame and success and how they inevitably seem to lead to self-destruction in one form or another. Icon therefore I am, I think, leads into the disillusionment represented in "King" - it's the realisation that your heart's not in your work any more, that you're just going through the motions because that's what people expect of you, because that is what made you an icon.

But on the other hand, while including "Icon" certainly wouldn't detract from the quality of the album, I'm not sure that it'd add anything that isn't already well covered by the eight songs that did make the cut either, and I am absolutely in favour of erring on the side of caution in these matters.