Birth Skin/Death Leather

Song Meaning

The lyrics paint a surreal, almost hallucinatory progression through a day, marked by a series of unsettling transformations and pronouncements. The "Mr. Electric Ocean" acts as a recurring phantom, appearing and disappearing with a dual nature, suggesting a pervasive, elusive force. This entity seems to observe or influence the transition from dawn, where it "woos the blue from the crawling eyes of babies," to midday, which "vanished, grinning through the sweat pores of harlots and whores." This establishes a tone of disquiet and decay, where innocence is corrupted and vitality is leached away by a grinning, spectral presence.