Your Ex-Lover Is Dead

I'm not reading eight pages of comments, but from what I've read is, you guys are neglecting to realize that they're BOTH singing the last stanzaa. It's not just the female singing it.

This isn't about a guy who can't remember what happened to them and a girl that was heartbroken but was okay with giving herself to him in the past...

They BOTH gave themselves to each other, and they BOTH have nothing left to say/save, and they're BOTH not sorry. This is a mutual acknowledgment from both people that they had this thing in the past, and it didn't work out. Don't forget the title of the song. "your ex-lover is dead" means that they're not the same person that they were when they had something. Her scar is a fleck, but it's also a scar, and a thing of the past.

I also want to point out that when I originally listened to this song, I didn't imagine it as two people singing to each other, but two different voices singing the same perspective. One single person couldn't remember the ex-lovers name, and has a scar, and will write a postcard. It could be one perspective, not two.

To me this song seems as if in a former relationship the two were involved but regardless of how much he cared about her, she was undecided and couldn't love him back in the same way. They meet again as if they were strangers, although they both remember their past together. I think the inability to remember the name part is moreso saying that he's over it, although he feels as if she thinks it still affects him. "This scar is a flec on my porcelaine skin" means that he'll always remember the way she hurt him, but he's saying he doesn't regret it, and the "house down the road with real love" seems to signify that he's found a person with whom he's fallen in love with and from whom he recieves what he needs.

by the way, i would totally marry this song if it was a person. i'm in love more and more with it.

I love the line "Live through this and you won't look back" It very much shows that these two young former lovers were on the verge of a relationship before it all came to a crashing halt. Now maybe years later they are reunited one more time, and are trying to make it through the evening without the old flame rekindling. I especially love how they come to grips at the end that the relationship is and forever will be dead.

If you've ever had the experience of randomly running into someone with whom you once had a brief, maybe sexual, but nonetheless wonderful relationship, this song captures the feeling. There's some bitterness, nostalgia, happiness. You are happy to have had what you had, but are glad that it was what it was and nothing more.

Evan and Amy were briefly engaged/married during/after Heart, which is an album about love and it's much more optimistic. This album is really sad, bittersweet I'd say. This song sets the exact tone for the rest of the album. I have felt this. My next door neighboor has felt this. that feeling the capture is incredible. I agree, in the low level dynamics of the song, the story is sort of girl gets dumped, time passes, sees boy again but now the person she loved is dead, and this new person, this new skin and body that looks like that person, can't even remember your name. But that's fine, she found real love, someone who actually got inside, reached deep and loved her. He didn't and so, she stands there, majestically, thinking "you only saw beauty outside of me...you pig...Repent all your sin!" and "I'll send you a postcard from the house down the way...from REAL love!" but at the same time she's sad and still hurt. She'll never get over it. We never do; that's why we are humans. I think this album is alot like MountainGoat's "Tallahassee" in terms of the themes. It's an album about the eventual downfall and reconstruction of love in a couple. These are albums to live through the winter and emerge in the snow. Jesus, music is amazing. More importantly, these albums (and Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Clap Your Hands, Death Cab, Bloc Party, Broken Social Scene, Neutral Milk Hotel) feel like what our generation is. They say on the official website that "Stars went into a cabin and smoked and drank and set themselves on fire, and when they emerged"...our generation is the generation of spiritual immolation, of chemical inbalances, Prozac/Zoloft/Ritalin/Adderall/Alcohol, all of that medication we have ingested. these bands represent musically what we are. they are the music of our generation.

i always thought it was "I'm not sorry there's nothing to say"

This song is about two people who were in a relationship,however brief, but one of them obviously put more into it emotionally. Eventually it catches up with them and they break up, probably because their relationship was ignored or not really acknowledged by one of the parties. Some time later, they run into each other by chance of having a mutual friend. They are trying to remember every detail of their time together, going over in their minds what went wrong and how each of them hurt each other. The more they think about it, the more they try to convince themselves (not really out loud, but in thoughts) that the relationship never would have worked out, and that they made the right decision by parting ways. I think that you can tell they don't really believe in what they're telling themselves because they keep repeating how not sorry they are, over and over again. Just what I got out of it.

There comes a time in your early twenties when you're sort of stuck between holding onto the youthful abandon of your teenage years and bracing yourself for the accountability of the real world.The people you meet in this time tend to be people that you cling to for dear life, and when a relationship forged in that time falls apart, it hurts more than any other before it, but you move on. In this song, she is able to be accountable, while he is not, and even though I get the feeling that HeE broke ties with HER years ago, she is the one who tells him off now, while he remains stunted. And while she is able to make her own choices now, she still longs for the old youthful abandon. God what a true-to-life tune.

Can anyone think of any reasoing behind the opening like, "When there's nothing left you burn you have to set yourself on fire"? I was thinking something about a revolution, but that really doesn't seem to go with the theme of the rest of the album..