Wanted to throw my hat into the TTFAFPB speculation ring, because I love all the posts I’ve been seeing about it. I’m particularly interested in Adam’s place on the album, and his importance as the latter party described in Cold At Night, “two are gonna stumble along the way/one is gonna go up alone”. (This is just my interpretation, but I have some points to draw from the lyrics to back up the narrative I’ve built in my head over my 8 or 9 listens so far)
A big throughline of this album is of course the relationship our nameless narrator has with the captain, but we shouldn’t discredit the repeated line “Me and Peter Balkan and you, friend”, which implies that at least those two songs are directed at Adam, potentially more. Another important thing to establish is that while Peter Balkan is definitely having the hardest time with his injuries and visions, all three of them are banged up and having prophetic dreams of the end, as shown by the narrator making his own wild predictions as to the end, particularly that he and Peter Balkan will be the last two, and the false prediction that his captain would be the last one remaining (“Soon it’ll just be you”)
I like to think Adam is the one we hear in Dawn Of Revelation, whipping up the other two survivors in a story that gives their circumstances a sense of weight and importance. They don’t have to worry about their old lives, their old friends, because the apocalypse is coming anyway. Set aside your thoughts of dying alone, we shall be joined by hundreds of cosmic refugees just like ourselves. This fire will be a safe haven for countless souls on their way to a greater purpose.
This narrative becomes something for the others to cling to, especially Peter Balkan, already far worse for wear than the other two. We see this in Your Bandage, as the narrator tries to clean and dress his head wound. We know this one is between Peter and the narrator because of the line “and Adam makes 3”
The next song, Peru, regards Adam’s last days in the camp before his “disappearance”, as he deteriorates mentally, our narrator finds him rambling in the water, and I think this is when Adam decides to skulk off to die like a sickly cat. We only ever see Peter and the narrator around the fire after Adam is name dropped in Your Bandage. I’ve seen many people interpreting Rocks In My Pockets as Adam’s suicide by walking into the ocean with rocks to weigh him down, which makes partial sense, except this isn’t the last we see of him, considering one the opening lines on Armies Of The Lord, “After we buried you at sunrise”. I imagine that the second verse of Rocks In My Pockets accounts the narrator finding Adam’s body further down the coastline of the island. Initially I read “wrapped up in your bandage” as Adam talking about having the narrator’s bandage on, but it also works from the narrator’s perspective, considering he also refers to Peter’s bandage as belonging to Peter. “Wrapped up in your bandage/Like a package on the porch/You were never gonna make it/I felt like you knew” can be interpreted as our narrator finding Adam’s body waiting for him.
This interpretation gives more weight to the line from Armies Of The Lord, “With nothing you predicted coming true”. Adam’s death marks the end of our delusions of a grand design to this tragedy. We still get a couple references to Adam “vanishing” past this point, but I tend to think that’s the narrator still clinging to the story for Peter Balkan’s sake, not believing it for himself.
(thank you for reading, have some rough designs of Me and Peter Balkan and You, Friend)
It’s Autumn, which means if I make a Big Pot of Soup it will Fix Everything. No one fact check me on this. We need to let the soup speak for itself.
cali:
2018 tumblr post:
1: why do they call it a boner when theres no bone in it
2: there used to be
3: why does this sound so ominous
2025 tumblr post:
1: forward my shambling soldiers and slay without thinking. let blood flow into every crevice of this rotten land
2: yes my lady
3: yes my lady
Crazy Town Tumblr post:
1: come my lady
2: come, come, my lady
3: you’re my butterfly
4: sugar
5: baby
