I'm absolutely convinced beyond all doubt that the line "you're humor in your coat" is "you hear me in the cold". That's what it sounds like, and it finally makes sense with the following line "you don't know how long I have been".

I'm absolutely convinced beyond all doubt that the line "you're humor in your coat" is "you hear me in the cold". That's what it sounds like, and it finally makes sense with the following line "you don't know how long I have been".

the lyrics booklet actually says "you're Himmler in your coat"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Himmler

hope that helps you with your analysis... and i was pretty sure it was "iss tyme too poot zee ear-cohvars ohn!'

So, anyone got a clue why it's called "Australia"?

To me this song seems very specific in a vague way. Most of the lyrics are very specifically worded to say pretty much anything you can think of. But here is my take...

"Born to multiply" easily sets up the tone for the song. It is about sex. It goes on to describe young love. "Born to gaze into night sky...." It continues about virginity, "All you want is one more Saturday." A nervous girl trying to hang on to it. Then speaker is then awed by this girl and REALLY wants to have sex...but her hands a sterile and held back. "Faced with the dodo's conundrum, I felt like I could just fly, but nothing happens...." The dodo was a flightless bird and the speaker is explaining how he wants to break the boundaries, but can't.

The next stanza explains how this perfect girl is taken by someone. Some nobody who is only handsome. "Pulled from the ocean" refers to 'Fish in the sea'. Indicating that she is no longer available. Most likely is stolen from him by sexual pleasure.

"Pining out the windowpane" refers to being stuck in a relationship, wanting out. Only a few years after commitment does she realize that she has made a huge mistake, created a personal "Nightmare".

Being "Alone" means she doesn't like her partner and is not satisfied. Of course, the girl feigns happiness. "you try to think of this as so much fun"

"Android's conundrum" refers to not being able to have emotions for one another. Being in a relationship, the girl and speaker aren't allowed to feel for each other. So the speaker takes hits on his ego, his "chin", but to no avail. Watching the lantern is watching the passion in her relationship. Watching the passion fade and dissapear so they can break the relationship by "jumping out the window"

Very amazing song. Cleverly crafted lyrics and fantastic ideas for their meaning. Great job Shins!

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basically, its about a guy on tour with his band ('one of us'). this refers to the last few tour dates the Shins played in Australia before recording 'wincing the night away'.
anyway, he has feelings for this girl but the song is the pro/against arguement for whether she should go with them. In the first verse he argues that she'd be 'damned to be one of us girl' and that he feels for her 'dodo's conundrum' that she wants to leave home and fly but can't.
In the second verse he describes the opposite side of the arguement, that she is sitting at home 'watching the lantern dim, starved of oxygen' when she could be with them. The chorus changes to 'DARE to be one of us girl' which gives it a positive spin. and he asks her to 'give me your hand and jump out the window' in an act of rebellion.
a song about the pros and cons of leaving home for a stranger.

no one likes menomena anyways....

the dodo is extinct, and an android is a robot (no soul, but made of some flesh/ desire?)
you're faced with the question of death and the soul.
this is the real question we're all faced with - so should you live for yourself or for something more important...
and what is more important?... why were you created?

fgevilmonkey and meanmr.mustard are right about the Himmler-thing. Here is a part from an interview found in the dutch music magazine 'Oor':

Wie heeft er de twijfelachtige eer om in Australia met Himmler te worden vergeleken?
“Dat nummer is grotendeels gebaseerd op een vrouw van middelbare leeftijd die ooit een collega van me was. Ze was een hele bittere vrouw vol spijt en schuldgevoelens. Ze had het gevoel dat ze haar leven had verprutst en dat had ze ook. Niet de juiste keuzes gemaakt, niet genoeg energie om de uitdagingen die het leven biedt aan te gaan. Ze haatte haar werk en was nooit getrouwd. Het maakte haar tot een enorm wreed en hardvochtig mens. Vandaar die aanduiding Himmler in your coat. Het was zo erg dat het weer lachwekkend was. Wat ik grappig vond, was dat ze in Jezus geloofde. Ik stelde me haar jeugddromen voor, alles wat nooit was uitgekomen. Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat ze nog steeds op hetzelfde kantoor werkt, ze zal er altijd blijven. En ze zal sterven aan een verschrikkelijke vorm van kanker. Zo’n persoon. Arme drommel.”

I’ll try to translate it:
Who has the [dubious?] credit to be compared to Himmler in Australia?
Mercer: “That song is mainly based on a middle-aged woman who used to be a colleague of mine. She was a very bitter woman, full of regret and guilt. She felt like she ruined her own life, and she had. Never made the right choices, not enough energy to face life’s challenges. She hated her job and never got married. It turned her into a very harsh and cruel person. Hence the denomination Himmler in your coat. [It was so terrible that it was absurd/hilarious/laughable.] (this whole sentence is difficult to translate :S). What I thought was funny, was that she believed in Jesus. I imagined the dreams she had when she was young, everything that never came true. I’m convinced she is still an employee at that same office, she will stay there forever. And she will die of some terrible form of cancer. Poor devil."

So all speculations about the human race and modern society turn out to be incorrect. Well, at least it's not what James Mercer intended to write about. Imho we may all interpret the lyrics (and any form of art!) the way we want to.

the beginning reminds me of BEERFEST!

"Cause your nightmares only need a year or two to unfold" - love these lyrics, love this song.

ElectRonald:
I think that interview snippet definitely backs up my interpretation from 12-30. Mercer confirms that the song is about a girl who used to have dreams but opted to go the safe and "ordinary" route and has become a dreadful person because of it. I think the subject of the song is any person like that girl and the form of the song is a plea to us not become like her. Truly brilliant wordplay at work too.

Thanks for providing (and translating!) the interview snippet!!!!

i love how upbeat and happy this song is! i have been singing it all over the place lately, but mostly in the shower (haha). my favorite line is the one about the dodo's conundrum. yay!

wow. how are the shins able to affect me like this? i think the lyrical meaning is completed by electronald and musiclover. thanks for helping a slightly deaf girl be better influenced by this song. you are saint simons.

I'm pretty sure if this song doesn't make you dance around in your seat every time you listen to it, you have no soul.

I somehow doubt he is saying 'Time to put the earphones' on at the start. Call me crazy but I sounds like he says time to put the eargoggles on... even though there is no such thing as eargoggles. I just hear the word goggles in there

the song of course has multiple meanings. i like the political one. i really like the sex one. but that Himmler reference is clear cut. Himmler helped design the gas chambers in the Holocaust. he's calling SOMEone (the girl? "the man"?) the evil nazi just watching and looking threatening in his coat while our speaker is trapped, slowly dying, and with nothing he can do to save himself. the lantern is starved of oxygen, as well as he, but when the gassing process is slow it might be hard to notice exactly how low the oxygen level is getting; it all jut feels like a bad headache. so as the lantern burns dimmer and dimmer he sees his fate approaching. so he sees the cause of all his misery, the silhouette of Himmler, and he says to him, "yeah, you. you dont know how LONG ive been in here waiting to die." right? makes some sense. a really epic metaphor for feeling doomed. knowing your punisher has no clue who you are and doesnt care; and who isnt so much a person as a name in a coat. and then he sees an opportunity in our subject this girl (whom he may or may not have just referred to as the right hand man of hitler) and says, "you can help. lets get the duce out of this death trap." it is ironic because his oxygen level is depleting so he wants air, but jumping out of a window might as well be a plummet into eternity. i guess he's saying that he would rather die by his own means and in freedom instead of being tortured and suffering in a metaphorical gas chamber. and he's also saying that the girl is in there with him and she's trapped and he wants her to escape with him and get that free air and that unknown (what story are we on? how far of a fall is it?) that our speaker desires after watching his fate slowly approach. you know that decemberists song 'we both go down together'? same story. its shakespearean tragedy. he would rather move from certain death alone to lessthancertain death while holding her hand.

knowing of Mercer's feelings of displacement in high school, i think australia has some ties to the experience of being out of place and waiting to escape, being smothered by other's ideas for you, and feeling that something important is waiting. i believe this is done through a loose story of a man tryin to help a confused girl. but that's just what i think.

and i hear earfocals, not earphones.

love this freakin song...every word

it sounds to me like he is saying

"you'd change your life for any ordinary joe"

it's EARGOGGLES (ie, like BEERGOGGLES). how does no one get that?

fursoftasfur===I actually like Sea legs, its not so bad :)


Sweet Doo: I think they explained it in the comments earlier but I can't remember now

this is just my opinion

This song is about never giving up on your dreams, or at the very least what a sad, pointless, circuitous life you might live if you do. Australia is a very remote place to most people in the world, a place I think many of us would be overwhelmed to be lost in. Similarly a life without dreams, or at the very least, without difficult, maybe unrealistic goals is a more real, visceral plain we wouldn’t want to be stuck on.

Born to multiply signifies pointless existence, life as merely a way of preservation, of keeping the human race alive. Once you realize this, you want more out of life and become born to gaze into night skies, meaning you dig deeper into life’s mysteries, even though you might not find anything. At the very least you are aware of the mask of merely being alive to reproduce, and you’re doing something about it by searching the skies and thinking and as a result forming dreams and creative, expressive plans.

Saturday represents your dreams. We always want more Saturdays, we always want more freedom, more time for ourselves. And our dreams, goals, allow us to be distracted in the present, through school or work or even family and religion at times cuz we know that what we are working for is that glimmer at the end, that light that will make all of our efforts seem relevant and worthwhile. Which is why we sell ourselves (to people willing to “Buy your life’s time”) through work. Mercer advises us to ” keep your wick in the air and your feet in the fetters” - your dream (here the metaphor is a burning candle) alive and in the air while you work (fetters are foot restraints, so he’s saying that while you’re tied down by your job, you still have your dream glowing brightly).

Here’s where the trouble comes. You cant keep up your dreams and live the happy, normal existence that is expected of you by your family and friends. They all expect you to be a lawyer, so what are they going to say when you express desire to be a songwriter? Or a dancer? Or a painter or artist or freelance writer?? Whatever your dream is, it’s completely incompatible with what they want and expect out of you. You cant have both, it’s either one or the other. I think Mercer is saying you should go with your dreams and not what’s expected of you or you’ll only live to regret it. The lyric “your shape on the dance floor will have me thinking such filth I'll gouge my eyes” means you’re seeing someone beautiful, someone free and wild that might tempt you to settle down and start a civilized, normal life, (and in doing so trick you into thinking you can have both) but you quickly gouge out your eyes, forget what you’ve seen, because that’s just a challenge you need to overcome. Because if you settle down, “You’ll be damned to be one of us faced with the dodo’s conundrum” (of being a flightless bird), and every time you try to fly away to go realize your dreams, nothing will happen.

“Will you be pulled from the ocean?” means will you be rescued from settling down, but find that it’s just a minute too late and you can no longer dream, or maybe be “changed by a potion” that’ll find you “a handsome young mate to love” and thus you’ll be settled with nothing to dream about. You don’t want that., cuz if that’s what you choose, then “You’ll be damned to pining through the window panes” and you’d “trade your life for any ordinary joe’s,” realizing what they have is so much more valuable and important than what you have and it’s not something you want to lose.

The last paragraph is the character (Mercer? Probably not) thinking over the fact that he chose to settle in what’s expected instead of following his dreams and now he’s faced with the “android’s conundrum” of living but not being alive (How you can really be alive if you have no dreams??? They’re what keep us moving from one day to the next) and he cant even cry about it, all he does is sit there “watching the lantern dim” and being “starved of oxygen,” meaning growing older and more upset and feeling more trapped like he’s running out of oxygen until he cant take in any more and just jumps out the window, leaves his stifling life of routine to follow his dreams.

this is definitely my favorite song of all time. itunes says that I've listened to it over a thousand times and I still never get tired of it. brilliant.