June 29 - Keeping House

Before I get into the lyrics I just want to delight in the gorgeous, sumptuous orchestration of this track, which starts and frenetic jangling guitars and grows to a joy of brass.

And then we come to a fast upbeat set of lyrics about the futility of running from the past and the necessity of trying. Everything you try and leave behind comes with you. Everything you do to tidy up after the past just leaves more clean space for memory to track muddy footprints into you. The ghost on your doorstep is you. It's that version of you that we were talking about in Attention All Pickpockets, the you that was, and this one carries the pain of being that.

And the worst and most foolish thing you can do with this ghost, with these memories, is to cram them down. If you do they'll come back in more ravenous and painful form. Instead you let them pass across you, taking neither pleasure nor pain, acknowledge them, and let them go off again. If you find the pleasant moments in them, maybe they'll come back later, but if you say your hellos and your goodbyes they'll soon be gone. It's a thin meal but you don't have to give more.