“This song’s about a parade that happened in New York City, uh, which is called the Mermaid Parade, it takes, it takes place out on Coney Island, and, um, this is, this is a song about that parade, and it’s not about nothin’ else, it’s just about that parade.” – Matthew Houck

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Matthew Houck’s voice, it’s not a voice that wants to fight.

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There is a ghost floating around in here. It’s not sadness itself, but the face of it. That face, it has tear-tracks and white lips. And they move, and a sound comes out. A cracked moan, half what it used to be, might have been. It’s an echo, maybe. Why argue with an echo? Why argue with a ghost?

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Those electric guitars are like sparklers, like fuses running out. They’re the lovers, the live wires. Those drums are the mermaids, dancing. And the piano, that’s the sea and the sky in the morning. It’s talking about possibility, about how what’s possible isn’t reduced by memory, by our moving on or being gone. It’s still endless.

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Just because you were three thousand miles away doesn’t mean you weren’t right fucking here. You weren’t, you weren’t there. Not at all.

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A man can argue. A man can lay out all that wonder, and just shrink. He can be so disgusted he can’t see straight, he can make words snarl.

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There’s a kind of eye contact you can only make when your eyes are closed, when you’re alone with ghosts.