Songfacts®:

• This is a track from Doves vocalist Jimi Goodwin's first solo album, Odlukek. Before their incarnation as Doves, the three members were a Dance music trio called Sub Sub. Asked by Digital Spy whether his own solo material would hark back to the Sub Sub sound, Goodwin said: "There's a track on the record called 'Live Like a River' which is like a cross between dirty grungy rock meets rave."
  
  "I still listen to all sorts of music," he added. "I haven't just made a 'some guy out of a band singer-songwriter' record, because that doesn't interest me. I've made a record based on all the things I want to hear in other people's records that maybe I haven't heard in one place."
  
  "It's not exactly original, but the inspiration for it was like a T90 CDK mixtape that you'd make for your mate, with all that crazy eclecticism and all those tracks slamming into one another," Goodwin continued, "folk tracks, carnival esque, Tom Waitsy oompah music."
• This was inspired by a letter the poet Ted Hughes wrote to his son. Goodwin explained to Under The Radar magazine: "Near the end he mentions a quote he attributes to the Buddha, 'Live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.' Bang! Pow! Those sentiments hit me so hard and resonated deeply with me. I had the chorus."