After Hours

This song is often misinterpreted to be about death, but according to lead singer Keith Murray, it's just the opposite - it's a song about living. Says Murray: "It's a song that was like a tortured poetry, that would be if that were about death. It's not at all." He goes on to explain, "That song essentially came from being on the road for two years, touring on that first record, and never really seeing the friends we have in New York, only seeing them once every four or five months for two days when we had a show in New York. And the intent that was put into ensuring that every amount of time that is wrung out of the few evenings that we had together, just trying to implement that hang-out time, sort of thinking of it as kind of a race against the clock at all times. That's a tone that is involved in a lot of my friendships now is that every time I see them I feel like there's always a sense of hurried camaraderie, where you meet each other and try to really, really choose the time you have for quality interaction as much as you can. That's sort of what that song's about. Especially in London – we have a lot of friends in London now, and London's a very early town, so everything closes at one or two, and everything – the night from there on is sort of a race to find an after-hours bar or somebody's house, the house of someone willing to have a party after hours kind of thing. It's definitely not about death at all."

Bassist Chris Cain told BBC Radio 1 DJ Jo Whiley about this track on her blog: "It's about that time of night when every instinct says you should not have one last drink, should not linger any longer at the pub, should not continue to talk to this clearly-troublesome yet troublingly-attractive stranger who keeps slurring as she holds eye contact for uninstinctively long periods of time - what you should do instead is go home. But it occurs to you that you don't have to follow your instincts. Indeed, that not following your instincts - or at least not having to - is exactly what makes you human. A squirrel's instinct makes a suggestion and he falls into line without hesitation or quarrel - ditto the pig, the sheep, the wide-eyed fish of the sea. But not you, not necessarily, not always. Certainly not this time." (read the full interview with Keith Murray)