77: Tentative Decisions

Chris Frantz, drummer, dreamer, was born into a military family. The march and shuffle only backs up the thematic concerns of the rest of the music - austerity and discipline, confusion and tentativeness blend here and bliss out in the final piano breakdown - this is before they're able to call a naive melody by its name.

Via the magic of nachtraglichkeit, you can hear the "Confused, confused" as confessional rather than descriptive - the piano breakdown is the sound of a band giving into the unabashed pleasure of consonance, a move they would rarely make again until Little Creatures. Consonance places identity in question. The confusion is the identity crisis that comes along with the liminal space of sexual possibility, and you can hear a bare striving in Byrne's voice, tense against the military drums. The problem is viral - the problem is given over, it's infectious or a disease. Think about the dis-ease, think about the nervousness of Byrne's "confused."

This song, like any other, is about fucking.