Two years later, with that particular political process lurching uncertainly on, the band have leaned further into the turbulence of the age. Two very good friends of ours died close together, and they were very good friends with each other.
Jan Oldenburg ran the Night and Day cafe in Manchester, which is where we got our first record deal, where we used to hang out. However you look at it, 50 percent of the country are unhappy and want to gamble the farm on any kind of change. I spoke to somebody who considers teenage girls a war generation: Nobody wants to stand out, nobody wants to establish themselves as different.
That's the same in a controlled country or a country of war. I knew adults who were really pondering what they would do [during a zombie invasion]. Something about it was really ominous: Why are we preparing for something that is obviously not going to happen? I realised it was something to do with the end of the world. My friend Tom, our tour manager, pointed out that for somebody the world ends every day.
I deliberately decided to work on [the lyrics] on a train because it had that rhythm. And then this thing happened, this thing that happens every day [a man took his own life by stepping in front of the train]. In a weird way, I thought of this as an homage to this person who was sad enough to take their own life. I thought it was terribly sad that it became something to look at your watch and tut about, so I wanted to right that a little bit.
And the bewildered question in this song is why he picked that spot. It was an unattractive bit of wasteland. It just proves that there was no cinema or poetry intended by the act, it was done somewhere that looked like the end of the world. The anger I felt, and how impotent my privileged, white, middle-class anger is where that scenario is concerned.
