Shout Out / mewithoutYou

Frequent references to scripture and literature are one of the hallmarks of the band. They're not the only mediums that end up getting namechecked, however.

The Bible

[A→B] Life

• "The Ghost": "'But a tree once cut down came up new from the ground'" is a paraphrase of Job 14:7.

Catch for Us the Foxes

• The title itself references Songs 2:15.
• "Torches Together":
  • The first verse references Matthew 5:15-16 and Proverbs 26:14.
  • "What light and momentary pain!" from the third verse references 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.
  • The outro is based on Luke 7:32.
• "January 1979": The chorus references Mark 9:35.
• "Seven Sisters": The "cleansing of my lips" is a reference to the 6th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, in which the titular prophet's lips are "cleansed" by an angel with a hot coal.
• "The Soviet":
  • The same verse referenced in the title of album is also present here.
  • "Oh wake up sleepers and rise from the dead!" almost directly quotes Ephesians 5:14.
• "Paper-Hanger": The chorus obviously references Jesus's turning of water into wine but also draws imagery from Philippians 2:17.
• "My Exit, Unfair":
  • The second verse references the narrative of the Book of Jonah.
  • This lyric more or less quotes Ecclesiastes 3:11.

    "What unseen pen etched eternal things
    On the hearts of human kind
    But never let them in our minds?''

• "Four Word Letter (Pt. Two)"
  • Describing rocks singing Jesus's praises is a likely reference to Luke 19:40.
  • "He'll use the weak to overcome the strong" paraphrases Corinthians 1:27.
• "Carousels": The chorus has the singer describe himself as "wandering, lost in Sinai" without God.
• "Son of a Widow": The title is in reference to a man raised by Jesus in the Literature/Gospel of Luke given that the outro of the track directly refers to the event.
  • The chorus references Jesus’s allegory of the Vine and the Branches in John 15:1-8.

Brother, Sister

• "The Dryness and the Rain": The opening verse alludes to 1 Kings 19:11-13, in which the prophet Elijah hears God whispering to him after a strong wind and an earthquake.
• "The Sun and the Moon": The opening verse refers to the story of Daniel, Peter walking on water, and Job 14:7-10.
  Daniel broke the king's decree
  Peter stepped from the ship to the sea
  There was hope for Job like a cut down tree
  I hope that there's such hope for me
• "In a Market Dimly Lit":
  • The opening line references the dove set loose by Noah in Genesis.
  • The third verse beginning with "I'm a donkey's jaw on a desert dune" references Samson's weapon of choice, the burning bush as seen by Moses, and the Parables of the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep in the Gospel Of Luke.
  • The sixth verse beginning with "I had a rusty spade but I'm not the fightin' sort" references Samson and his Weaksauce Weakness.
• "O, Porcupine":
  • The second verse includes a paraphrase of Psalms 137:1, a reference to Jesus describing stones crying out in Luke 19:39-40, and refers to creation groaning in a nod to Romans 8:22.

    And at the water's edge, Babylon
    As we laid and slept, the river wept
    For you, O'Zion!
    The stones cry out
    Bells shake the sky
    All creation groans...''

  • The lyric "While waiting for the Mother Hen to gather me" is a reference to Jesus's metaphor for his own relationship to Israel in Matthew 23:37.
  • The verse beginning with "And at the garden's edge beneath a speechless sky" references Jesus's Agony in the Garden.
• "In a Sweater Poorly Knit": The opening line refers to Moses floating down the Nile.

Ten Stories

• "Grist for the Malady Mill":
  • The chorus references Jesus's metaphor of new wine and wineskins from Matthew 9:14-17.
  • "Your great cause to the moths and the rust!" references Matthew 9:17.
• "Fox's Dream of the Log Flume": "And so since I’ve often tried to run them off a cliff like Gadarene swine" references the Exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac from the Gospel Of Matthew.
• "Nine Stories": Walrus's declaration of "If the weather ever withers up your vine, Jacob knows a ladder you can climb" references an episode from the Book of Jonah and Jacob's Ladder from the Book of Genesis.
• "Four Fires": The line about making ploughshares from swords is an inversion of Joel 3:10 in which God instructs the people of Judah to beat their ploughshares into swords.

Pale Horses

• The title itself references the Horseman of Death from the Book of Revelation.
• "Pale Horse": The title references the same horseman, but the "'the oil and the wine'" and the "Black Horse reaping of the crops we grew" refer to the Horseman of Famine from the same book.
• "Watermelon Ascot":
  • "Not-named Lot's craned neck-salt" is referring to Lot's unnamed wife from the Book of Genesis, who was apparently turned into a pillar of salt for looking back at the destroyed city of Sodom.
  • The "iridescent-Joseph-coat" referenced in the second verse references Josephs "coat of many colors" from the same book.
• "D-Minor":
  • "We're an unshrunk patch on a tear of the edge" references Jesus's words in Matthew 9:16.
  • "Unto each day is sufficient misfortune thereof" closely resembles the KJV translation of Matthew 6:34.
• "Mexican War Streets": "Rock of salvation lightly esteemed" borrows phrasing from the KJV translation of Deuteronomy 32:15.
• "Red Cow": The title itself refers to a ceremony from the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Numbers.
  • This verse refers to an occurrence in the subsequent chapter in which Moses brings water out of a rock by striking it.

    And on the arid ground of thirsty Zion’s hill
    Cold waters tumbled down where the staff of Moses fell

  • The "snake of brass" refers to two separate incidents - the first of which being the use of a brass snake to heal snake bites that occurs in the subsequent chapter of Numbers and the second of which being its destruction following its conversion into a spiritually destructive idol in 2 Kings 18:4.
  • Figs falling from the sky is an image from Revelation 6:13.
• "Dorothy": "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"^translation  "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is one of the last recorded words of Jesus, appearing in transliterated Aramaic in both the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
• "Blue Hen":
  • "Death where is thy sting?" is taken directly from 1 Corinthians 15:55.
  • "Straw-short bricks" is an allusion to the fifth chapter of the Book of Exodus in which the Pharoah decrees that the Israelite slaves are to gather their own straw to make bricks in response to Moses's demands.
• "Lilac Queen": "Hands washed Pontius-Pilate clean" is an allusion to Pilate literally and metaphorically washing his hands of the guilt of Jesus's execution in the Gospel Of Matthew.
• "Magic Latern Days": "Unto the earth a bomb is born" is a reference to the prophecy in Isaiah 9:6, repeated in Luke 2:11 in the contexts of Jesus's birth.
• "Birnam Wood":
  • The second verse relays the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel in the Book of Genesis from God's point of view.
  • The chorus and outro reference Abraham's Secret Test of Character from the same book.
  • "A column cloud descends" references the pillar of cloud that God used to lead the Israelites in the Book of Exodus.
• "Rainbow Signs": The title itself references the rainbow sent by God following the flood as a promise not to destroy humanity again in the Book of Genesis; it's also referenced within the first verse.
  • The climactic middle section of the song (excluding the last three lines starting with "After which message-less birds take flight without cause") is essentially a lyrical retelling of Revelation 6:1-17.

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• "Bethlehem, WV":
  • The first line references the appearance of angels to shepherds in the Gospel Of Luke.
  • "Ransomed souls" is a phrasing found in many verses of the New Testament like 1 Timothy 2:5-6.
  • Streets of gold is an image taken from Revelation 21:21.
• "Cities of the Plain":
  • The song is written in the lyrics booklet in the same manner as the Song of Songs.
  • The first line is taken from Jeremiah 8:22.
  • "Thirty sons’ thirty towns’" references Judges 11:4.
  • The second verse references the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
  • "Bride adorned in garments of salvation torn" references Isaiah 61:10.
  • The following verse references Jeremiah 8:20 and 8:12.

    Harvest past, summer’s end
    If we still are not saved
    Was I not sufficiently ashamed?
    Neither did I blush save to speak your name?

• "Kristy with the Sparkling Teeth": "In spite of wonders, disbelief" is almost word-for-word found in Psalms 78:32.

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• 9:27 a.m., 7/29
  • "Honey from the cleft rock" is a reference to Psalm 81:16.
  • "Ploughshares gone swords" is, like a similar line in "Julian the Onion", an inversion of Joel 3:10.
• "Julia (or, ‘Holy to the LORD’ on the Bells of Horses)": The second title is part of Zechariah 14:20 (it's also part of the song itself).
• "Another Head for Hydra":
  • The chorus mentions "circling Sinai another forty years".
  • "For those with ears to hear" is a common phrasing found in The Four Gospels.
• "[dormouse sighs]": "Symbols on their hands now stored on foreheads" has similar phrasing to God's words in the Book of Exodus regarding the establishment of Passover (13:9 and 13:16), and to His words in the Book Of Deuteronomy regarding the keeping of the Law (6:8 and 11:18).
• "Winter Solstice":
  • "Shaping cypress with pitch on both sides" references the construction of the Ark in Genesis 6:14 ^note  Cypress is often used in translations to replace the cryptic "gopher wood" as it's literally written
  • Coincidentally, "Breastplates of righteousness" references Ephesians 6:14.
• "Flee, Thou Matadors!": "The wicked in you ran, though none pursued" is almost identical to Proverbs 28:1.
• "Tortoises All the Way Down": "Surely as the sun early on the east side comes" is a rephrasing of part of Hosea 6:3.
• "2,459 Miles": "The Lord God said it is not good for man to be alone" is almost Genesis 2:18 word-for-word.
• "Wendy and Betsy": The phrase "Ancient of Days" is a title for God used in the Book of Daniel.
• "New Wine, New Skins": The title itself also references Jesus's metaphor of new wine and wineskins in Matthew 9:14-17.
• "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore": The final line alludes to Matthew 7:13-14.
• "Break on Through (to the Other Side) [pt. Two]"
  • "For anyone with ears to hear?"
  • "Can you really make all things new?" is in response to Jesus's words in Revelation 21:5.
  • "Cloven tongues of fire" refers to Pentecost, specifically Acts 2:3.
  • "Bond or free" is phrasing taken from Galatians 2:3.

Everything Else

[A→B] Life

• "The Ghost":
  And she smiles a lie, "That may very well be,"
  She replies "And so it goes
  It's the Devil, I suppose
  But it doesn't matter much to me."
• "Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt": The title itself is a phrase found in Slaughterhouse-Five.
  • This lyric is an almost-direct quote from "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne.

    "And so you'll be to me
    Who must obliquely run
    Thy firmness makes my circle just
    And makes me end where I begun"

• "We Know Who Our Enemies Are": The first verse contains lyrics from "Splinters" and "Clogger" by 16 Horsepower.
• "I Never Said That I Was Brave": The lines "You might sleep, but you'll never dream" and "You might laugh, but you'll never smile" are almost identical to lyrics in "Suffer Little Children" and "You've Got Everything Now" by The Smiths.
• "Silencer": "I don't do too much smiling these days" is a line in the same vein as many in "These Days" by Nico.
• "The Cure For Pain": "Hear my voice in your head and think of me kindly" is a lyric from "Rubber Ring" by The Smiths.

Catch for Us the Foxes

• "Tie Me Up! Untie Me!": "I need more grace than I thought" is a line from the poem "Dissolver of Sugar" by Rumi.
• "Leaf":
  • "Hanging on from branches, licking honey from the leaves" references the allegorical framing device of A Confession by Leo Tolstoy.
  • The shouted vocals following the first two verses are slightly altered versions of a title of a work by Søren Kierkegaard - Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing: Spiritual Preparation for the Office of Confession.
• "Seven Sisters":
  • The opening two lines are taken from the last two lines of "The Rose of the World" by William Butler Yeats.
  • "You dance inside my chest where no one sees You" is a line from the poem "Art as Flirtation and Surrender" by Rumi.
• "The Soviet": "The dead are dancing with the dead" is a line from "The Harlot's House" by Oscar Wilde.
• "Paper-Hanger": "I was dead then alive" is the opening line of "Ode 1373" by Rumi.
• "Four Word Letter (Pt. Two)": This lyric is an almost direct quotation from "This Great Love" by Rumi.
  "But I'm so small I can barely be seen
  How can this great love be inside of me?"
  Look at your eyes
  They're small in size
  But they see enormous things
• "Carousels": "Like a horn blown by some sad angel" is an almost direct quote from The Dharma Bums (specifically near the very end of chapter 26).

Brother, Sister

• "Messes of Men": "The propeller's spinning blades held acquaintance with the waves"^*  specifically from Act 1, Scene 2 .
• "The Dryness and the Rain": The lyric "A fish swims in the sea while the sea is in a certain sense contained within the fish!" is inspired by a line in "The Road Home" by Rumi.
• "In a Market Dimly Lit": The lyric "The music our collisions would make s a sound that turns the road-that-leads-us-back-home" is inspired by another line in the same poem.
• "Brownish Spider": The second verse is a almost identical to a stanza in "Several Questions Answered" by William Blake.
• "In a Sweater Poorly Knit": The lyric "And if she comes circling back we'll end where we'd begun" references "A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" just as "Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt" did.

It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright

• "Goodbye, I": "Knowing well that those who know don't talk and those that talk don't know" is a slight rephrasing of a line from the 56th chapter of the Tao Te Ching.
• In "A Stick, a Carrot & String", Jesus muses that he could return home and start a family, alluding to the The Last Temptation of Christ, in which the novel's version of Him is given a vision of such a life.

Ten Stories

• "February, 1878":
  • The second verse uses similar phrasing to the second verse of "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman.
  • In the final verse, Rabbit and Fox describe Tiger as having "once burned bright" an allusion to "Tyger, Tyger" by William Blake.
• "Elephant in the Dock": The title itself references the essay "God in the Dock" by C. S. Lewis.
  • Both the following lyrics and the song's outro are altered versions of text from "Billy in the Darbies", the closing poem of Billy Budd by Herman Melville.

    Good of our chaplain to sail Kalispell Bay
    And now down on his marrow, for this old fool to pray

  • This lyric is adapted from a line in "The Circus Animals' Desertion" by William Butler Yeats.

    Lord, for sixty-some years I'd surrendered my love
    To emblems of kindness and not the kindness they were emblems of

• "Bear's Vision of St. Agnes":
  • "You've worn me like an albatross, I've only slowed you down".
  • "Looked upward lest the charm had fled" is phrasing taken from "The Eve of St. Agnes" by John Keats.
• "Four Fires":
  • "My faith in love is still devout" is a lyric in "Rusholme Ruffians" by The Smiths.
  • "And the night birds beat me with their wings with a horrid laughter as they pass" is adapted from sung dialogue in The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz.

Pale Horses

• "Watermelon Ascot":
  • "Here again the chords clash" references the line "Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!" (and the line itself is written in the lyric booklet) in "Sestina: Altaforte" by Ezra Pound.
  • "Speed it up a knot, feed, meat, no, milk, no!" is a lyric based off of one in "The End of the World As We Know It" by R.E.M., with the band's name written in italics in the lyric booklet.
• "Mexican War Streets":
  • The repeated use of the phrase "O my soul" and the lyric "Until the temporal bridge be burned, until our anchor stocks hold firm" in the first verse reference "A Noiseless Patient Spider" as well.
  • "I quoted White Nights thinking that'd get rid of you".
  • The lyric "My Will: And those who precede" is written in the booklet as "'My will: [his will that fronts me. Seas between.' -James Joyce]". The written lyric is a quote from Ulysses.
• "Blue Hen":
  • "Far beyond a cure, far beneath regard" is a paraphrase of Lady Macbeth's line "Things without all the remedy should be without regard", which is itself written underneath the sung lyric in the booklet.
  • The phrases "Boots of Spanish Inquisition eyes" and "Sheltered from the storm" are probably references to "Boots of Spanish Leather" and "Shelter from the Storm" by Bob Dylan. ^note  Aaron has covered songs by Dylan before
• "Lilac Queen":
  • Hammerhand and Vulture Man are villains in ThunderCats (1985).
  • "Hastening lest thy gates be closed / But I find that there is time" is adapted from the last line of "Endless Time" by Rabindranath Tagore, and the lyric booklet includes a postscript advising the listener to read it.
• "Magic Lantern Days"
  • "Time will fill the rubbish yards, the hospitals, the funeral yards" references "Alone with Everybody" by Charles Bukowski; he's named along with the original lines from the poem in the booklet.
• "Birnam Wood": The title itself is a reference to Macbeth.
  • Additionally, the first verse references the Prophecy Twist in the fifth act while the second includes a lyric worded similarly to a line of dialogue from Ross (also in the fifth act). Interestingly enough, the lyric in the booklet differs from what is actually sung in that it more closely resembles the original line. ^note  The line from Macbeth is "Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end". The line is written in the booklet as "'Your [cause of] sorrows [must not be] measured by [your] his worth / For then it hath no end’ [again, from Macbeth]." The lyric in the song itself actually sounds like "Were sorrows measured by your worth / Our grief would have no end."
  • "Safe in the arms of kingdom come" is a phrase found in the fifth chapter of Ulysses.
• "Pale Horses":
  • "Threw a mute curse at the Boise sky" is similar to a line from the sixth chapter of Ulysses: "Mr. Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute curse at the sky".
  • Referencing "the man in the moon" in a verse about a father-son relationship feels intentional.

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• "Dirty Air": The repeated refrain of "Ce n’est pas une chanson sur une peinture d’une pipe" ^translation  "This is not a song about a painting of a pipe" is a reference to The Treachery of Images by René Magritte.
• "Existential Dread, Six Hours' Time": "Nexus-6 Replicants", "red glowing eyes" and "I gladly would've let you fall" are all references to Blade Runner.

[Untitled]

• "Julia (or, ‘Holy to the LORD’ on the Bells of Horses)": The title itself refers to the character of Julia from Nineteen Eighty-Four, although it isn't apparent without looking at the lyrics.
  • "Out beyond ideas of right & wrong is a field / Will I meet you there?" is a line from "The Great Wagon" by Rumi.
  • This verse is a reference to Winston and Julia's relationship in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

    "Send a couple rats," said Julia I'd have done the same thing to you
    Coffee and a milk, now Julia
    Who do you think needs who more?

  • There are two references to Back to the Future in the music video.
    • The primary setting is a High-School Dance; both the invite attached to a door in the opening shot and the hung-up mural behind the band are nigh-identical to the poster and mural in the film, only reading "Enchantment at the Bottom of a Made Up Ocean" (referencing a lyric in the song) instead of "Enchantment Under the Sea".
    • The band ends up vanishing, referencing the Ret-Gone Marty almost suffers. Mike and Greg even look at their hands as they turn translucent in the same manner that he does.
• Also in the music video, one dancer is abducted by Secret Police and bound while a fishbowl full of rats is brought to him, a clear nod to Winston's torture in Room 101 from Nineteen Eighty-Four.
• "Another Head for Hydra":
  • "Endless words of 'a dream deferred'"
  • Two works by Eric Carle are referenced in the second verse: Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
• "[dormouse sighs]": "Before the day is done, my prince is gonna come" references the number "Someday My Prince Will Come" from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (according to Aaron, it's Brandon's favorite Disney song.
• "Flee, Thou Matadors!": "Tinky's harp on the wall next to Janis Joplin!"
• "2,459 Miles": "When again that line from Eleanor Rigby cuts me to the bone".
• "New Wine, New Skins"
  • "I'd like to write a sequel to "The State That I Am In".
  • This lyric references "Reel Around the Fountain" by The Smiths; the lyric booklet even prefaces the second line with "SCORPION [a Smiths fan]".

    Now a scorpion in the sky, harmless as a butterfly
    You can pin and mount me likewise!

• "Break on Through (to the Other Side) [pt. Two]": The title (which is sung) indicates the song is intended as a sequel to "Break On Through (To the Other Side)" by The Doors.

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