Core of Nature

The band spent time at a farm in Buffalo, Texas owned by one of guitarist Eric Pulido's childhood friends. Frontman Tim Smith told Pitchfork whilst they were there, "We got into British folk. We started listening to Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and Pentangle; those are the three biggies. Strawbs, Amazing Blondel, a lot of more obscure bands: Yellow Autumn, Windy Corner. A lot of Pentangle. I had never listened to that stuff before." The Buffalo trip sparked this song.

The song is built around a couplet by German Playwright, Poet, Novelist and Dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) - "Into the core of nature/No earthly mind can enter." "I don't know much about Goethe, I just had a book of his poems from the library," Smith admitted to The Independent February 5, 2010. "A lot of times, I'll use poetry to start coming up with a melody, because I don't write the lyrics first, I always start with the music and then see what sounds right coming out of my mouth. Certain words suit my voice better than others, and those words can then create the germ of an idea for a song. But I can't come up with it out of thin air, so a lot of times, to come up with an idea for a melody, I'll sit at the piano or guitar with a book of poetry and start singing the words, then I'll go back and replace them with my own lines. But that line was just so great, I realised I was never going to top that."