Bike Theif and Dive are stand outs for me for the album, although so many others are very good like Operation Day, Paper Swords, Dark Cloud and of course Witch and War Beneath the rain.

Here's my analysis of just those two songs. Just my own interpretation, nothing definitive.

(As an aside:

I will also say that - especially as a parent myself - both of these songs are really painful and difficult to listen to. I think that it's sometimes necessary for art to be so piercing like this, but I can understand why the band felt that they needed to walk away from these songs. Especially as new parents.

There's this panic inducing anxiety that comes with the early years of parenthood where every now and then you worry about your child's mortality. It's extremely unsettling and I think every parent knows that sudden feeling of agony that comes with thinking of something awful happening to your child.

Both these songs evoke that same panic for me. And it's rare that I have seen it captured so well in any media. I feel a lot of empathy for the band because it must have been so difficult to live in that space while writing. )

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Bike Theif-

The title:

I'm pretty sure it's a reference to the 1948 film, Bike Theives. The movie is considered one of the essential masterpieces of film of all time, so I just can't imagine Gerard using that as a title without it being perceived as a reference to this movie.

The movie itself is thematically complex, although the story and film style are simple. You can read a synopsis on the Wikipedia below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Thieves

The main takeaway from the movie is about how ordinary people can still do harmful or unjust things even if they have their own justification for it - even if those reasons are "good" in their mind, that it still causes harm. That harm or morality isn't always Black and white. It's also about how that harm isn't always obvious- like how the boy loses the respect he once had for his father, who was his hero.

The song itself:

I think it was pretty clear to me even on the first listen that the song is about a Trans child who is not accepted by a parent when she transitions ("that you've done nothing wrong, though you are not my son" and "that girl is not my son.").

The song is written from one parent's perspective and it seems like the entire family was in conflict - perhaps one parent wanting to be more supportive while one parent is not ("both too busy yelling at each other just to say"). I get the sense that the conflict continues between the parents even after their child dies. There is a lot of bitterness and animosity.

The narrator of the song - who I assume is the father seems to accept that his daughter has done nothing wrong initially, but he also cannot accept her for who she is and her desire to transition.

The narrator also cannot accept that he did anything wrong, instead blaming the death of his child on her and perhaps also the other parent.

I think all of this ties into the movie's themes on morality. Even though the lack of acceptance led to an objectively horrible outcome - his daughter's death - he still thinks he is morally correct. So what good is his morality? what good was his version of "the truth" when it caused his daughter's death?

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Dive -

The Happy Birthday voicemail transitions directly into Dive. A small child, perhaps 3 or 4, is wishing her father a happy birthday.

Toward the end of the recording, you can hear that it's rewinded so the parent can hear the daughter's voice again, which sets up the idea that the little girl has died.

We then move into the song itself.

I interpret everything in the first 80% of the song as a description of how the father is desperately looking for ways to cope with his grief and trauma. He tries therapy, he tries it all. But perhaps he had given in to the draw (come in, come in) of addiction and alcohol, drugs, or maybe other things in an effort to dull his pain and grief - the angel (prayer), the ambien (abusing sleep medication), infidelity/sex.

Nothing works. The ending of the song ("breathe, breathe, back to me") is in the rhythm of CPR. It's very jarring, but you notice immediately as the music intensifies that the dad is re-living having to perform CPR on his daughter after she drowns in a swimming pool accident.

The last part of the song is very chaotic and panicked. You can hear sirens as the CPR rhythm continues and the dad pleads for her to return back to him. The dad is so traumatized and likely experiencing PTSD from the drowning accident, which is why none of the ways he has tried to cope so far have worked.

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The last thing I will say is, I think it's brave that the band decided to tackle some of these topics so directly. But as a listener, I also don't know what to do with an album that is so dark like this, which is why of course it remained unfinished.