Torch Song

Lyrics

Torch is, supposedly, the name of the character around which Clutching At Straws centres. He's a writer suffering from writer's block who turns to alcohol in hopes of finding inspiration at the bottom of a bottle. He's also such a thinly veiled attempt by Fish at hiding behind a character rather than admitting that he is totally talking about himself that the whole thing would be absolutely laughable if it wasn't so sad. As if the public persona of "Fish" wasn't a character for Derek W. Dick to hide behind in itself. As if that wasn't the whole point of the image of the jester from all the pre-Misplaced Childhood artwork.

This song is the beginning of the quiet, reflective section towards the end of the night; we've got through the haze of drunken antics, the self-aggrandising and political posturing, and "Torch" is now starting to sober up. It's not a phase he enjoys, because with it comes the memory of all the problems in life that led him to start drinking in the first place, and will no doubt lead him to drinking again in the near future. It's rather a vicious cycle.

It doesn't appear to be a "torch song" in the traditional sense ("a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on", as Wikipedia describes it), or at least not one adressed to an actual human lover, but one could make a case for the song being a torch song for Torch's lost love of his craft.

Perhaps, though, it's just called "Torch Song" because it's the only one on the album that even bothers to try to hold up the pretense of the Torch character, with it's repeated refrain of "burn a little brighter now" and the little spoken word interlude between Torch and his doctor. "Christ - it's a romantic way to go really, it's part of the heritage, it's your round i'n'it?" Again, it'd be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

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.