Songfacts®:

• The song is from the first Cousteau album following their 2005 split. When they re-formed, they did so under the name CousteauX (with a silent X), under legal pressure from the Jacques Cousteau Society. The song's jarring, tortured sound, with stabs of electric guitar cutting into stomping percussion, contrasts sharply against the other songs on the album, which are generally slower and more romantic.
• According to Davey Ray Moor's Songfacts interview, "'The Innermost Light' was written with Carl Barât from The Libertines. He turned up for a songwriting session with that phrase. Carl borrowed it from a tattoo on his manager's arm that quoted Aleister Crowley, the Edwardian occultist of Led Zeppelin renown. Crowley used 'The Innermost Light' as a term to describe what others might call 'the soul,' or the inner spark of light that is our thoughts. Carl and I worked around ideas of light, and the quest for the innermost light in the eyes of a soulmate."