The Radio Dept - we climb the wired fences, 2003

"This track stands out after dozens of hours of listening to The Radio Dept. as one of my favorites. It's sweet with a slight overcast of sadness, washed in a blissful numbness. This (and everything I project onto it) leads me to believe it's a song about a relationship that is enjoyable and comforting but also uncertain, as it also carries uncomfortable aspects. The first verse conveys a fond vignette of walking through a park and 'climbing wired fences', but there is a hint of tension as one person senses "something outside". The use of 'outside' is discomfiting, as the setting is already established as outdoors, in a place of comfort and safety. This ill-fitting context creates a form of dischord that makes sense as the song continues. Fences are boundaries, 'wired' could be a shortening of 'barbed wire', meaning these boundaries must be carefully negotiated in order to avoid injury - much the same with the boundaries between most people. The second verse introduces a feeling of unease or dissatisfaction, of coping with what is being negotiated while avoiding barbs. The line "I must be ill" represents the questioning of our own mental state or emotional stability that can occur when struggling with understanding a troubled relationship. The following lines, "Keep thinking we pretend / And 'how long before this has to end?'" is a continuance of this line of thought, realizing that the relationship may not be sustainable over time. The line "on self-medication ambition fails" suggests that the speaker may be using substances to cope with the uncertainty and anxiety from the sense of erasure of the self in order to sustain the relationship. "Or can you set me free?" speaks to the reluctance to be the one who decides to end the relationship while struggling with this anxiety. This relationship has aspects that are pleasurable and others that are troubling. To me, this is a beautiful reverie of ambiguity and uncertainty in the future of the relationship, as well as a struggle to maintain one's sense of self and purpose within. This circles back to the odd redundancy of the word "outside" - a subtle introduction to the theme that permeates the whole piece."