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Interpretations:Broke In Two

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Let's hope it's not autobiographical as this song is about another couple breaking up! Like Museum of Idiots it's based on a misunderstanding beyond the control of the narrator, but these problems are within his means to solve, not that he can think of a way of doing so. Linnell, again shows his range by singing in yet another style! Wonderful contrast between his breathy vocals and the choppy guitars. Excellent. (Mr Tuck)

A very '80-style, New Wave track. Musically and thematically, this reminds me a lot of Linnell's "love gone wrong"-themed 1988 track "They'll Need a Crane" - except that he ditches the detached observation he used in that classic song, and instead goes the first-person, unreliable-narrator route in these lyrics, with amusing results. -- GR

Possibly about a guy unable to make new memories, as in Memento (which features a scene just like the one here with the pen). This would make a nice compliment to the previous song about the girl unable to remember old memories.

That's exactly what I thought when I heard this song. The first verse mirrors the scene in Memento, and the part about going back to the start of the day but doing everything the same could refer to his inability to remember what he had done. However, it seems unlikely that this is what the song's about.

Question: Is it possible that this song is about evolution? Talk of an orangutan and breaking in two would have to do with a Darwinian evolutionary chain possibly? I don't know. Just a thought I had. (Necro1ite)

That does seem to work, but I find that the theme of forgetting - maybe on purpose? - is pretty prominent throughout the song, and I don't see how that would fit into the picture... - Rhinoceros Rex
Perhaps so many of us forgetting our more primitive ancestry? - Crummy

This is incredibly unlikely to be intentional, since as far as I know Linnell is no computer expert, but the song pretty accurately describes the forking model of the Unix operating system. (There are even some good references -- "scratch" is what spare memory is called and "go back to the top" sounds like popping the stack. And of course a computer program would do exactly the same thing.) The stuff about writing stuff down and the orangutan refers to the difficultly of having the two forks of the process communicate with each other.

Does this song end sort of funny (all distorted and getting higher) or is my copy messed up?

Baby, that's art! (Mr Tuck)

The copies I downloaded from theymightbedownloads.com were distorted at the end as well, I tried downloading again, but it was still distorted, so I came to the assumption that it was supposed to be that way. That was the second song on the spine that I heard like that. - EZ

This song continues the tradition of Forgetting, Remembering in TMBG's songs. I like the bit about the orangutan. --An orangutan

Every time I hear this song it seems as though the part where the lyrics are "I would go back to the top of the day from scratch if I though this thing could be fixed," sounds exactly like some song I've heard before, not including the lyrics. I can't really tell what it is; it may just be that 2-5s in succession sounds similar no matter what song it's in. --Drumstick

My copy doesn't distort at the end. It fades out, repeating the chorus, with Linnell singing "I'm an orangutan."

I think it's a song about a relationship where one person is not very mature, or at least not as mature as the other. The singer is disorganized and irresponsible, and it the relationship eventually ends from incompatible frustration.

I think it might be about siamese twins? - PastaKeith

I agree. Has to do with twins. From the run-me-down/orangutan part, sounds like a prequel to My Evil Twin.


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