Dissect - S11E5 - Weird Fishes / Arpeggi by Radiohead

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

Our season long dissection of Radiohead's In Rainbows continues with its fourth track "Weird Fishes / Arpeggi" - an incredibly intricate musical arrangement that's considered among the band's best. We dissect the layered, multi-pattern guitar parts that create the song's immersive, oceanic soundscape as well as the potential symbolism of Thom Yorke's lyrics about being stuck at the bottom of the sea. Support Dissect by leaving a review or sharing this episode on social media. Follow @dissectpodcast on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Host/Writer/EP: Cole Cuchna Additional Analysis: Dr. Brad Osborn Song Recreations: Andrew Atwood Audio Editing: Kevin Pooler Theme Music: Birocratic Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify and The Ringer, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. This is episode five of our season-long dissection of Radioheads in Rainbows. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Last time I Dissect, we examined In Rainbow's third track, nude, a gorgeous, elegant ballad expressing the fragility of the human condition, highlighting contrasting themes of hope and despair, triumph and defeat. As In Rainbow's continues, we'll find a similar thematic undercurrent in the album's next track, the subject of our episode today, Weird Fishes Arpeggy. Weird Fishes are Peggy dates back to at least 2005, when Tom and Johnny performed an early

version of the song at the Ether Festival, an annual music event that features one-time collaborations between artists from various fields. For their collaborative performance, Tom and Johnny worked with the London Sinfonietta and the Arab Orchestra of Nazareth, who provided orchestral accompaniment to this early version of Weird Fishes. It's a gorgeous rendition of the piece. one I'd highly recommend listening to in full. Since 2005, the song joined the many others radiohead struggled to arrange to their satisfaction. By their 2006 performance at Bonarue, they'd gotten pretty close to what ends up on in rainbows,

only the overall groove is faster and more aggressive, thanks in large part to the distorted electric guitars. In the interview with Mojo, guitarist Ed O'Brien revealed that attempting to find the appropriate climax for arpegy was a long battle, saying, quote, Arpeggy is a song that's obviously epic in scope, but every time, time we tried to do it and fought against it being big, it didn't work. The problem is that you've got to convince people that big doesn't mean stadium. I think we do big music well. It's kind of natural to us. But the problem with big music is the connotations that come with it, all that candles and stadium stuff. But epic is also about beauty, like a majestic view. And what we did on this record was allow the songs to be epic when they have to be, unquote. In our last episode on nude, we heard this majestic epicness and

the song's gorgeous climax, and noted how every creative choice up until that climax ensured they wouldn't have to throw in the kitchen sink to bring the song to a crescendo. Specifically, they carefully removed sonic elements whenever a new element was introduced, which helped maintain the intimacy of the song throughout, but also provided catharsis when those elements previously kept separate were unified in the climax. On weird fishes, Radiohead will take the opposite approach, as more than half the song is a steady build through layering. Little by little, parts continuously stack on top of each other until without hardly realizing it, we'll find ourselves in the midst of the song's crescendo.

Appropriately, this slow build begins with quite literally the simplest part imaginable. Four drumstick clicks establishing the song's tempo, which is then followed by introducing the song's drumbeat. So a few things to note about this drumbeat. First, it's very straightforward. There's no doubt about it, we are in 4-4-4-common time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 1, 2, 4, 1, 1, 4. As we'll see, the unambiguous straightforwardness of this drum beat will go a long way in keeping

the song grounded when nearly everything else in the song will create rhythmic ambiguity. It's likely for this reason that the song begins with just drums, even starting with basic stick clicks. It's almost like they're holding our hands here in the beginning, making sure we really feel the pulse and groove before the guitars tear it apart. At the same time, we should also take notice of the kick drum pattern in the speed, observing how infrequently it's used. It begins with two eighth note strikes, and then disappears for the rest of the measure and the entire next measure. It then returns for a single strike on the downbeat of one, only to again disappear for the remainder of the measure and the entire next measure. With this in mind,

let's listen to the drumbeat again, focusing on the kick drum, or the lack thereof. Now I draw your attention to this lack of kick drum because I think it goes a long way in what makes this drum beat so successful for this song. Because the kick drum is the deepest drum in the kit. The bassy, thumping sound it produces are like tiny punches we feel in our chests. They're hard to ignore and can really alter the groove of a song. In weird fishes, because so much rhythmic complexity will be created by multiple overlapping guitar parts, too much kick drum would interfere with those textual rhythms. The backbeat would become too defined in a way, and we'd lose the water-like undulating fluidity that really defines the song. And so the kick drum

occurs just enough to keep our bearings, but not so much as to overpower the complex rhythm. textures to come. Thus, the beat overall achieves the perfect balance required for its role in the song, which is essentially a glorified metronome, something reliable that maintains the structural integrity, but not so defined that it competes with the real instrumental star of weird fishes, the guitars. The first guitar joins the drumbeat establishing the song's central four chord sequence, E minor 7, F sharp minor 7, A major, and G major 7. These chords are played with three-note arpeggios, which is what it's called when the notes in a chord are played individually rather than all at once. Arpeggio is an Italian word, and its plural is technically arpeghi, hence the song's original working title,

as the piece contains multiple arpeggie stacked on top of each other. The arpeggios here are played from high to low in groups of three eighth notes. This creates what's called rhythmic dissonance with the drum part, which is playing in groups of four. Typically, all the parts in a song are written with the same rhythmic groupings, creating a consistent, predictable, easily repeatable groove. But because the guitar is playing in groups of three and the drums are playing in groups of four, we get a three against four grouping dissonance. I'll just count three against four, and notice how their alignment almost instantly diverges.

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. As we just heard, it takes 12 counts or 3 measures for the parts to realign with each other, only to instantly diverge again. Now we hear this central guitar part for 3 chords by itself straight up the middle of the mix. On the 4th chord, a second electric guitar enters Panned Hard Left. However, this guitar plays a pattern of not 3, not 4, but 5. With the entrance of this second guitar, the fluid, water-like texture really emerges, which is created by the 3 different overlapping groupings of the drums and 2 guitars.

Let's isolate that second guitar playing a grouping of five. One, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five, one, two, four, one, two, four. Now to again give you an idea of what's happening from a purely grouping perspective, I'll count out the three different groupings occurring simultaneously, the drums in four, the first guitar in three, and the second guitar in five. One, two, one, two, one, two, four, one, two, four, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, one, two, three, one, two, As you can hear, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

As you can hear, at this point, it's hard to follow any one particular grouping, since there's no predictable point in which they all align together. And just for comparison, let me count a traditional measure of four-four-four-four-four multiple parts are playing conventional rhythmic patterns. Notice how frequently and thus predictably the individual parts align with each other. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8. The big difference here, which I hope you felt, is that the individual patterns realign much more frequently,

grounding the overall rhythm with predictable repetitive units. As we heard in Weird Fishes, the only predictable repetition is the drums. Meanwhile, the groupings of the overlapping guitars will become harder and harder to discern as more layers are introduced later. In this way, Weird Fishes' musical texture seems to take cues from minimalism, a genre of classical music that often creates complex textures from repetitive, overlapping motific lines. As an example, we can look at one of minimalism's most regarded composer, Steve Reich, and his piece Vermont Counterpoint. As Reich's pieces often do, it begins with a short motif that immediately repeats over and over. This is soon followed by the entrance of another motif

played on the same instrument, repeated and layered atop the first one. This process of layering repeats until we end up with an incredibly intricate texture in which any single motif is difficult to discern. We know Johnny Greenwood is a fan of Steve Reich's music, as he's performed one of his pieces for electric guitar and his sense befriended Reich, with Reich even composing an original composition using melodies from Radiohead songs titled Radio Remix. While Weird Fishes isn't a direct imitation of Reich's music by any means, the overlapping guitars certainly feel at least partly inspired by minimalist music. And again, combined with the gentle, clean timbre of the guitars, these overlapping textures create an undulating water-like musical atmosphere.

Thus, it's incredibly fitting that Tom enters the song singing about the depths of the ocean. Tom enters the song singing, in the deepest ocean, the bottom of the sea. It's a striking image, specific in its imagery, but ambiguous in meaning. The ocean floor is one of the least explored areas of the earth, and combined with total darkness, it would seem to naturally symbolize mystery or the unknown. We also think of the classic use of low terrain representing low emotional states, like the phrase hitting rock bottom. Technically, the bottom of the deepest ocean, known as the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, is the lowest point on Earth, some 36,000 feet below sea level. So even taken

literally, Tom's words would mean he's the lowest any human has ever been. The lyric then takes an unexpected twist as he sings, Your eyes, they turn me. The idea of eye contact at the bottom of the sea gives this opening stanza a surreal or dreamlike quality, which is only accentuated by the floating, ungrounded character of the music bed. Given the inherent intimacy and connection of eye contact, it's possible Tom is describing finding a connection or even hope in his darkest moments. Even the idea of sexual connection is present, as they turn me, evokes the phrase turn me on, with the blackness at the bottom of the sea intimating a dark bedroom, where the whites of your partner's eyes are the only thing visible while intimate. Still, like the music unfolding

little by little, Tom will dole out his lyrics and fragments, with each successive phrase illuminating and recontextualizing preceding phrases with additional clarity or possible meaning. But before moving on to his next lyric, we should acknowledge the melody Tom sings here. Or we might say lack of melody, because for the most part, Tom is singing one note over and over, a D. On the words, Your Eyes, Tom holds a C sharp, before returning again to the D. On the surface, Tom's repetitive emphasis of D wouldn't be too unusual. The song at this point is in the key of D. But the interesting thing is that the four-cord progression he's singing over does not contain a D-major chord. In fact, despite being in the key of D, we will never hear a D-major chord played in the entire song.

If you recall from our last episode, the title chord in any key signature is the chord that provides the most stasis and resolve. It's where we feel at home. So in the key of D-major, the D-major chord is the one that would provide this feeling of rest, of being grounded. Yet weird fishes will never give us that chord, and thus we will never get that feeling of rest. which in the context of what we've discussed so far, feels incredibly symbolic, feels just like being submerged in the ocean, lost in a vast unending body of water with seemingly no end nor beginning. So not only do we have overlapping groupings creating rhythmic ambiguity, but we also have a kind of tonal ambiguity in the chord progression

that never provides resolution or rest, a seemingly unending enigmatic loop. And this to me is what makes Tom singing D over and over again so interesting, because it's such a contrast, where the chord progression refuses to settle on D, Tom insists on it. It's like he's reaching for something not yet attainable, trying to will or manifest something into existence. As we'll see, this becomes increasingly relevant to the themes explored as weird fishes continues to unfold.

Tom continues his emphasis on D, asking, Why should I stay here? Why should I stay? Again, the ambiguity allows for multiple interpretations. The most literal take is that here refers to the depths of the ocean, with Tom asking himself the obvious question of why he's choosing to remain in such a dark, even dangerous place. If we're assuming Tom is using the bottom of the sea to symbolize being in a dark place spiritually or emotionally, the question he's asking himself is a potent one, one that resonates with anyone

who's found themselves stuck, be it in an unhappy relationship, in an addiction cycle, in an unfulfilling job, or any number of emotionally taxing situations life brings us. There's even the possibility Tom is implying suicidal ideation, posing the classic, existential question of whether life is worth living. Interestingly, after repeating, Why should I stay here? Why should I stay? He doesn't continue singing as he did in the previous stanza, instead opting to leave the remaining half of the core progression completely blank. It creates a strange open space, almost as if he's pondering the answer to the question. There's even the possibility that emptiness is the answer, that there is no reason to stay.

This interpretation is validated by the fact that in the very next stanza, Tom does find escape by following those mysterious eyes he met at the bottom of the sea. That's right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, we heard Tom ask himself why he should stay in the dark place he's found himself in. Then as Weird Fish is continues, Radiohead will add a third guitar into the mix, panned hard right. This new part uses the same five pattern as guitar number two.

But at this point, because the guitar texture is already so thick, what's going to cut through the most, what's going to have the most impact, is register, how high or low it's playing. Because what we have now is the main mid-register guitar pans straight up the middle. The second guitar playing in a mid-to-high register in the left channel. Now the third guitar playing in a high register in the right channel. Little by little, Radiohead is filling out the spatial and frequency spectrums. And from this point on, we'll observe these new parts being added at a more rapid rate,

as the band works its way toward what Ed described as its majestically epic climax. Tom continues the near monotone melody singing, I'd be crazy not to follow. Follow where you lead. This is more contemplation about whether to stay or leave this dark place, as he tells himself the sane or logical thing to do in this situation is to leave. Still, the fact he's even contemplating the decision tells us it's a difficult one, and that perhaps he's been so low for so long that it's strangely comforting, or at least predictable, routine.

It's still not clear if this entity leading him is an actual person, or something more symbolic, abstract, or psychological, like the subconscious intuition, or even something like the union idea of the anima, which is personified in dreams by images of women ranging from seductress to spiritual guide. Tom then repeats, your eyes, they turn me. Only now, instead of repeating that same D note, Tom suddenly reaches up to an F sharp before dropping down to a B. Normally this wouldn't be something I pointed out, but because Tom has been so consistently focused on that repeated D. Relatively speaking, this actually ends up feeling like a significant moment. It's as if Tom, with the assistance of this mysterious figure, is starting to

emerge from the lifelessness or repressive drudgery of inhabiting the bottom for so long. Indeed, more signs of life, both musical and melodic, will be heard in the next repetition of the chord sequence. It's here that we're going to hear the entrance of yet another guitar, playing in an even higher register than guitar number three. So we can see now pretty clearly what Radiohead is doing with these as each one is playing in a register higher than the last. Typically, music that progressively gets higher and higher creates feelings of anticipation and tension, and it's starting to feel like at any moment all these intricate layers are going to collapse on each other.

We did our best to approximate these four overlapping guitar parts and just listen to how dense it sounds. We're also going to hear the intensity of Tom's vocals increase. As you listen, notice how he still continues to hit those repeated ds, yet now he elongates each one, stretching them a little further than before. And in the spaces in between Tom's lyrics, Ed O'Brien will enter for the first time singing long, wordless, two-note phrases, adding yet another layer to this already concentrated musical texture. It turns out the line, your eyes, they turn me, was an incomplete phrase, completed here for the first time, turn me into phantoms. The dream logic

continues, as a phantom can be used to mean a ghost, the spirit or soul of the dead, or something that's experienced but is not real. It's hard to know exactly what Tom means here. Perhaps he's expressing the spiritual connection he has with this person, a connection that transcends the physical realm. Or maybe it expresses a kind of helplessness or irresistible pull he feels in the presence of this entity, spirit, or person. Whatever it is, turning into a phantom allows Tom to become mobile for the first time in the song. As he continues, I follow to the edge of the earth and fall off. It's another unexpected twist. We're likely to assume, that any place aside from the pitch black bottom of the sea would be an upgrade, but consistent

with the surreal dream logic of the song, Tom describes his phantasmal spirit form following his muse to another abyss, the fictitious edge of the earth, over which he descends into the black and void below. It again evokes suicidal ideation, but this death seems clearly symbolic, which will find more evidence for in the next stanza. But first, we have to acknowledge how this line functions as a climactic trigger. Because as soon as Tom finishes singing Edge of the Earth, the drums move from the more tempered highhats to the expansive ride symbol, which really opens up the song dynamically. Then when the chord sequence repeats and Tom starts singing his next lines, we're going to hear yet another guitar into the mix, the highest one yet. With the addition of this fifth guitar layer,

the switch to the ride symbol, the call and response vocals between Tom and Ed, and Tom's intensified delivery, we suddenly find ourselves in the song's climax. We have officially have officially reached majestic epicness. Tom impassionately sings, yeah, everybody leaves if they get the chance. It's an interesting turn, as up until now, Tom has been speaking somewhat intimately about himself and this other person or entity. Everybody leaves, suddenly broadens his view to the universal. It's perhaps a similar sentiment to the line, I'd be crazy not to follow. The idea that anyone in his situation would leave this dark place if they had the opportunity.

Oftentimes, when we find ourselves in prolonged stage, of unhappiness, how to escape or overcome these states is not at all obvious, or even if we might know the solution in theory, actually enacting it can feel impossible. That's why it feels like you're trapped. But every so often, the universe offers us a breakthrough, some catalysts for real change. And this is what this person or entity has offered Tom, a way out. They have become the impetus for transformation. Thus Tom sings the definitive next line, and this is my chance. There's no more internal debate. Tom is ceasing his opportunity to escape.

It's no coincidence this moment of defined intent and transcendence comes precisely at the song's dynamic apex, the very moment it reaches its peak. And Tom heightens a moment even more with his melody. As we noted, Tom has been emphasizing that repeated D throughout the song. Understanding the song's lyrics about being stuck in a dark place, it seems incredibly fitting that Tom has been stuck on this Dino, as if struggling to break free.

So far, we've only been lyrics. heard one real notable deviation from this D note, the brief moment when Tom reached up to an F sharp before falling back to a B natural on the words, they turn me. But here at the moment of definitive change, we hear Tom emerging from that D at length. He begins on the D singing, everybody leaves, then stretches the D on the words if they get the, and then on the word chance, he reaches up and holds an E, and extends it further on the word this. Combined, this is nearly four full measures of this sustained E, the highest note in the song so far, aside from that very brief F sharp. Now, in most songs, this wouldn't be so notable. I mean, E is just two notes higher than a D.

But relative to what we've heard in the song to this point, both melodically and lyrically, this shift up feels like a literal breakthrough, like Tom is emerging from confinement, which is, of course, exactly what he's singing about at this moment. With this in mind, let's listen to this passage again, noticing the impact of this melodic shift. After just over three months, minutes of rising tension and continual building to the very brink of collapse, Weird Fish's finally does collapse into a new section. The consistent eighth notes continue here, but are now primarily heard on a Fender Road's keyboard played by Johnny. It's a major timbrel change, yet the clean tone of the keyboard and the fluid eighth note pattern maintains the underwater feeling.

It's also playing a new chord progression, the first deviation from the original four-core progression that the song began with. In all, it's a welcome respite from the sustained intensity of the overlapping guitars. The shift into a new section also works symbolically, as Tom just sung about seizing his opportunity to leave, and now we have seemingly made that transition. It's here that Tom now sings, I get eaten by the worms and weird fishes, picked over by the worms and weird fishes. It's yet another twist, at least in my reading, as the promise of leaving a dark place implies an improvement of condition. Yet now we have the song's darkest, most grotesque image yet, Tom's decomposing body on the ocean floor being devoured by worms and fish. While some might interpret this

as a literal death, again evoking suicide, I personally see it as a symbol of rebirth, with the visual of Tom's corpse depicting the death of a past self as he moves from one phase of life to another. He's leaving behind this old self to rot in the darkness it inhabited and building himself an new as he moves forward. Of course, the song's title is also stated here. Specifically the word fishes is an unusual choice, as most commonly fish is both the singular and the plural. But technically, fishes can be used when referring to multiple species of fish grouped together, though still most people usually say fish in this context as well. And this brings us back to the second part of the song title, Arpegi.

Recall that Arpegi is the Italian plural form of Arpeggio, chords whose notes are played individually. But in reality, most musicians just say Arpeggios. In fact, I've been a musician most of my life and I've never once heard anyone use Arpegie. Thus we find the connection between the two titles. Both arpeghi and fishes are weird plurals. Tom repeats the phrase picked over by the worms and weird fishes, and then repeats weird fishes twice more. The notable thing about these repetitions is the melody Tom sings, which descends lower each

time. The first time he sings an F sharp to a B natural. The second time he starts on this same B, then moves up to a C before descending to an A. He then begins on this A and descends to a G. So the overall melodic shape of these repeated weird fishes is dissension, beginning with the high F sharp and ending with the G almost a full octave below that initial F sharp. This melodic descent is a musical reflection of the lyrical content. It's sinking. We'll keep this in mind as the song continues, because as we'll hear, it'll end up being a pretty important musical and thematic detail.

With an abrupt crash, Weird Fishes launches into a new section driven by Phil's Intent drum beat. It's almost a callback to the way the song began, only now fills hammering the ride symbol and its drum pattern is full of kick drum. We also hear Ed switch over to a heavily affected guitar, drawing out long single string root notes. This guitar line is heard and counterpoint to Tom's ethereal wordless vocal line, which functions more like a synthesizer or string instrument in this context. Soon Tom's guitar re-interes the song, playing a groovy riff primarily on the lowest string of his guitar, almost resembling a bass line. Now when this new part repeats, Johnny re-enters with another heavily affected guitar using a

delay pedal to create a high, rapid fluttering of arpagios. With these new parts being introduced and stacked on top of each other one by one, we're starting to see what Radiohead is doing here. They have essentially started over, building the song back up through layering just like they did in the beginning. The final two layers are bass and an electric guitar playing three-note high to low arpagios, just like the guitar heard at the start of the song. now that Radiohead has deconstructed their own song only to put it back together, layer by layer,

we recognize how the large form structure of the piece mirrors the surreal narrative of the lyrics. I mean, is it a coincidence that at the very moment Tom declares he ceasing his opportunity to leave, to escape this sunken place, the song itself decomposes, only to build back up again. This is what we do when we're reborn. We hit bottom, we die a symbolic death, and then we build ourselves anew. Like so many details we've noted throughout the song, the very musical structure of weird fishes corresponds directly to its text. Like a piece of cinema, it's a perfect marriage of narrative and musical score.

Over this new musical territory, Tom repeats, I hit the bottom, hit the bottom, and escape. Escape. It feels like a summation of Weird Fish's central theme. The idea that hitting bottom, while painful, is also an opportunity to start anew. To escape your situation and rebuild yourself from the ground up and an image closer to your ideal. Tom's melody here is notable in that he's singing in a lower register, the lowest of the entire song. This is in contrast to the repeated D we heard throughout the first half of the song.

In fact, Tom begins on a D when he sings, I hit the bottom, only now it's a full octave lower. Of course, singing in the lowest register of the entire song while describing hitting bottom reflects the lyrics perfectly, continuing the marriage of theme and music. It also recontextualizes that middle section in which Tom repeated weird fishes three times with an overarching melodic descent. It's as if he was sinking into this low register, painting a melodic picture of his lyrical fall. We also observe a bit of text painting when Tom says, bottom,

as he sings a drawn-out descending melody, as if he's sinking. The chords behind him here also sing, moving down from a C to a B to an A to a G, four descending chords in a row. This part then repeats to close out the song, but not before we hear one last thematic flourish at its very end, where Tom will sing something like, like, yeah, just before the music comes to a halt.

All right, so the note Tom sings here at its very end is a brief B-natural. This is significant to me for a few reasons. First, it's the lowest note he sings in the entire song. This completes the song-long dissension we've observed in Tom's vocal register, which started at its highest in the first half of the song, worked its way down during the repetition of weird fishes in the middle section, and remained at its lowest in the final section. Of course, this melodic dissension mirrors the song's thematic emphasis

on sinking to the bottom, and thus singing the song's lowest note in its final moments is an incredibly symbolic punctuation mark, confirming that Tom has indeed hit bottom, has escaped. But there's also the note he sings here, a B natural. Recall that in the first half of the song, I pointed out how the chord progression didn't contain the tonic or home chord of the D major key signature, yet Tom himself was singing D over and over, mirroring his search for resolution, some kind of rest or closure. While here in the song's outro section, it's Tony personality shifts to D major's relative minor key signature of B minor. Recall in our last episode, we discussed how we generally perceive major key signatures with

brightness or happiness and minor key signatures with darkness or melancholy. We also discussed how every major key has a relative minor key, two keys that share the same notes, but one emphasizes major and one emphasizes minor. Weird Fish's ends on a B minor with Tom singing a B, the song's first real convincing cadence. The closure Tom was searching for came not in the house. happy D major, but rather the melancholic B minor. This matches perfectly to the song's theme of hitting bottom to find escape. It was only when Tom embraced the bottom, when he surrendered to the

reality of his circumstances, that he found resolution in the form of starting over, of building himself anew. So often it's easier to avoid or mask the discontented condition we unavoidably find ourselves in sometimes. We mask it in vice and denial in the comfort of routine, prolonging the difficulty of truly acknowledging that our situation is unsustainable. Some prolong this acknowledgement for years, decades, some their entire lives. Because to acknowledge it is to formally admit a need for change. And often change requires us to suffer, requires us to leave a long-time partner, or detox from a substance, or quit a job we worked years to achieve. These are some of the most difficult experiences and decisions in our lifetimes. It can feel like you're dying,

like as Tom put it, you're being eaten alive. That's because in a way, you are, a part of you is dying. And this to me is what's at the heart of weird fish's arpegy. It articulates the many deaths we experience in a lifetime, articulates the precise moment in which one phase of our life ends and a new one begins. There's no escaping the suffering inherent in these moments, the inherent difficulties of formally acknowledging a need for actual change. But the underlying optimism and hitting bottom is that the only way forward,

the only way to go now, is up. Today's episode was written and produced by me, Cole Kushna. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a review of the show wherever you're listening right now. It really helps. Additional musical and lyrical analysis by Dr. Brad Osborne. Audio editing by Kevin Pooler. Theme music by Bureaucratic. And an extra special thank you to Andrew Atwood for recreating all the musical parts we heard in this episode,

an extremely difficult task for this song. All right, that's it. Thanks for listening, everyone. Talk to you next week.