Marbles III

Lyrics

An interlude. Writing separate entries for all four of the Marbles title tracks is surely an exercise in redundancy, but nonetheless, the project would not feel truly complete without them. On the 1CD version of the album, they provide a narrative thread entwined throughout to tie the themes of it all together and give a greater sense of unity to the whole thing. On the 2CD version they're just spread far to thin to have any such effect, and end up seeming like rather pointless little vignettes.

This one's probably my favourite of the four, if that means anything much. The young Hogarth has, at this point, developed quite a sizeable collection of marbles, but alas, tragedy was about to strike; "There were almost four hundred until the black day/I discovered how high they would fly through the sky/If you used them for tennis instead of a ball". It is, as all songs about one's childhood inevitably turn out to be, a symbolic lament for a loss of innocence, in this case self inflicted. But that covers all four sections; the reason this one is my favourite is just the nice bouncy keyboard line it starts off with. Simple things, eh.