Been on a Phantogram jag lately. The descending bassline is what grabbed me by the [neck], right away. It comes just slightly later than I expect it to, like it's a half-beat off, which makes it kind of exciting. I like the lyrics, too. It's too specific and detailed to be a metaphor, so I assume it's literally about drug addiction.
I don't like staying at home
When the moon is bleeding red
Woke up stoned in the backseat
From a dream where my teeth fell out of my head
Cut it up, cut it up, yeah
Everybody's on something here
My God send, chemical best friend
Skeleton whispering in my ear
I particularly like the sped-up cadence she uses to deliver the 3rd & 4th lines, and the last two lines of this part. The line "Everybody's on something here" takes me back to certain times and places. Then this next part starts and she's clearly talking to someone, her partner, or a friend.
Walk with me to the end
Stare with me into the abyss
Do you feel like letting go?
I wonder how far down it is...
It's like she's asking someone to go over the proverbial cliff with her. The difference in her voice from the verse to the chorus is interesting, too. It evokes that dreamy, stoned haziness of the previously manic party-girl from a moment ago. Then it changes abruptly again.
Nothing is fun
Not like before
You don't get me high anymore
It's hard to tell if she's talking to her addiction, or the drugs, or a person or people. Could be all of the above, of course. Drug use is so often a social thing, or at least it starts out that way, twined up in relationships and social circles.
Runnin' through emergency rooms
Spinning wheels and ceiling fans
My handshake, cellophane, landscape, mannequin
Faking it the best I can
It's Cadillac, Cadillac red
No hands on the steering wheel
I'm crashing this save-a-ho puppet show
UFO obliterate the way I feel
I love this part, with the combination of her rapid delivery and that descending bassline again. It slides into a semi-coherent stream of consciousness, like someone who's on a bender. I continue to hear the second line as "Pinwheels and ceiling fans", thinking of those plastic spinny-things on a stick that you can get in hospital gift shops, with cellophane balloons saying "Get well!" I can imagine someone laying on their back, being wheeled through a hospital corridor in a daze, fixating on the whirling motion of the ceiling fans and pinwheels above them. "Cadillac, Cadillac red, no hands on the steering wheel" reminds of a moment when I was sitting in the passenger seat thinking, without any feeling of alarm, about the fact that the person behind the wheel had taken the same [stuff] I had and marveling at how they were still able to drive.