Connecting with yesterday’s Talking Heads, who were clearly a strong influence on the US band formed in 1992 in Issaquah, Washington, is also the guitarist who became a full member of the band from 2006 to 2010, the Smiths’ (and multi-collaborator) Johnny Marr. In his autobiography, Set The Boy Free, he described his time with the band has one of the happiest period of his career and his work shines through with his riffs as the song's cornerstone.
But what is the song actually about? The video shows a fisherman, played by frontman Isaac Brock, telling the tale of how a fish ‘this big’ bit off his hand and a series of other crazy sea adventures. The other old sea salts in the bar disbelieve him until he reveals that his hand has been replaced by a microphone, and later, another character played by Seasick Steve, reveals how the same fish bit off his leg, replaced by a guitar neck.
In reality, the song doesn’t seem to be about fishing at all, and Marr has described how Brock improvised the lyrics while the two of them jammed out the guitar riffs. But perhaps what this innovative indie band created, from their 2007 album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, is a song that hints that now matter how bad things can get, even losing an arm or a leg, there is always the music to fall back on:
Well, it would've been
Could've been worse than you would ever know
Oh, the dashboard melted
But we still have the radio
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