Inaction

Album: With Love and Squalor (2005)
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Songfacts®:

  • "The ultimate distillation of the overriding theme" of With Love and Squalor, this song combines the subjects of sexual terror and the "social ramifications of suddenly being a viable band, 'viable' meaning that other people actually know you exist and give a sh*t about it, no matter how small a sh*t that is," as Keith Murray tells it. "I think this song spends a lot of time worrying about why people that know me and recognize that it's sort of a cyclical thing in their mind, which I get totally bent out of shape over active behavior so much that it might become sexual about anything."
  • Regarding the line, "I'm sick of waking up on your floor for the sixth or seventh night in a row" Murray explains, "That is largely delivered in total degrees, and an obscurity. But that is actually a pretty literal line. There was a girl that I was in a relationship with, a relationship that really wasn't happening, we were just totally hanging out and flirting without even acknowledging it was flirting. But she was just a very, very good friend. So I would be in Manhattan or somewhere, out drinking until five in the morning, and then obviously not want to drive or take a 40-minute subway ride home. So it legitimately involved consistently sleeping on the floor of somebody's apartment with whom I should have been in bed with, or just gone home, and make a decision one way or the other about how it was going to go, rather than go to her house and be like, 'Oh, well, I guess I'll lie here on the floor then, and I'll see you tomorrow.'" (read the full interview with Keith Murray)

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