MPLOA

It seems a foreshadowing now that the world has seen the biggest pandemic in a century, and so it carries a new sort of meaning. When it was written the lyrics mare simply about being locked out of the Uk because Zac had his passport Lost/stolen in Spain. Within that sits a reference to the embassy that is kind of like the part of your brain that is inaccessible. And so the mask is then the edifice for being a person in your own mind, but there is two faces because there are two versions. One extremely evil and the other extremely good masks, attempting to access the inaccessible parts of the mind. The thematic structure poses questions about wealth, mental health and ageing.

Hitchin a ride details the experience of a great undertaking, a journey - spiritual or physical - into the unknown on the shoulders of fate, 'the backbone'. Manifested via a relentless desert stomp and angry guitars, taking influence from Tame Impala's 'Elephant', it is a vision of the simultaneous anticipation and fear experienced when venturing into new territory, something which has familiar resonation for all. Originally derived from an acoustic number written by Zack, the song took shape during one of the duo's many excursions to new places.

Convincing the self as the response to the action of a prior love (leaving for milk four years back and never returning) is the main theme of this song. Likening the familial attitude of what we do to make ourselves comfortable when arriving home; normalized to become the actions of someone dear. A reductionism that echoes to the self 'There(s) nothing here for you', collided by memories of Swinging there with you. Repetition is thematic here, in reference to the endless consciousness which seems to arrive in our deepest perils, to torment and drive us mad. This is the last song we hear on Deeper Shallow, the album, which says something of how we come into and out of albums like putting on and taking off our shoes. This diminutive renormification approach to the present-continuous state of culture, expressionism and expectation.

Zac has said that the title of the song is an extension, by reference of the albums gaze, to maturing into adulthood seeing blue; a thin veil for depression. It's a Ringoesque response to the question, "How do you feel?" - taken to represent an invitation to meet ignored, and the isolation of feeling young of heart but older in mind. The ending lyrics are a casual escapism derived most likely from the trauma of youth, or even semi-youth, lingering like a cold-tide into the experience of friends, health and adulthood.

MP has said that the song meaning came to Zac elusively in the bath, after submerging his head below the surface, with music vibrating the through the bowl of the bath it seemed to distort but in some way free the sound of what was playing. It struck Zac as this absurd paradoxical continuum; the deeper one goes into the water, the shallower the sound is. This forms the essence of the song structure, for the deeper into the song you get, the shallower the lyrics feel as the cyclical repetition of feeling and expressing. Repetition is the key to understanding DS, that the quantity of the same weight makes it that many times heavier. Sort of similar to Archimedes' discovery of buoyancy. Zac independently of knowing the science of sound, recognised sound vibrations weigh more when travelling through water. Giving birth both to the beginning of Mad Panda's music journey and an alien scientific thought expressed vividly through the medium of Art.

The lyrics are based on co-founding member, Sid of Mad Panda, being unable to sleep, from a recurring horror, as being dream-haunted by the nightmarish demise of Syd Barrett (Roger Keith) from Pink Floyd. The story of Syd Barrett is well documented in the cultural music zeitgeist canvas, but for newcomers Syd's journey to insanity by LSD is typically considered an impressively catastrophic career burnout. An impossibly huge waste of talent. In reference to Mad Panda, Sid has spoken previously of being able to hear songs within his mind with the clarity of a vinyl player, this became for a few nights Sid's own nightmare, two of Syd's songs beginning to drive Sid to an insomniac madness. Can't Sleep by Mad Panda is the result of coming to the end of Sid's sleepless terror. A Psychedelic fever insomnia stapled to Deeper Shallow's weird and provocative canon.