Songfacts®:

• Elbow guitarist Mark Potter wrote the music for this cinematic song with the working title of "Pram." Vocalist Guy Garvey then penned the lyrics on a railway journey from Manchester to London. The singer told Apple Music he decided to write the words on a train "because it had that rhythm."
• Garvey's train journey was halted when a man committed suicide by stepping in front of the locomotive, so he penned a song about an unexpected death, which is a theme that runs through Giants Of All Sizes. The album's lead single, "Dexter & Sinister," is a case in point; that cut was inspired by the loss of two of Garvey's Manchester friends.
• At one point, Garvey sings about the self-centered reaction of the other people in the carriage.
  
  First-class tuts
  
  He explained: "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."
  
  Elsewhere, Garvey questions why the lad picked that particular spot to throw himself under the train.
  
  Sir, why here?
  In the filthy, fly-tip bramble here
  There's Cannock bloom and river sun
  A mile just down the line
  
  Said Garvey: "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."
• Want another song with a train time in the title? How about The Who's Quadrophenia track "5:15."