“That’s just a dream I had one night about me and Steve [Mackey – Ed] DJing at a rave in Scotland and getting all our equipment stolen and a girl getting killed at the same time. It came together really, really quickly. It was written within ten minutes, more or less fully formed.”Jarvis Cocker (514)

“That came after I’d been back to Sheffield. I’d been to the café that gets mentioned in the song and just remembered all these things that had happened 13, 14 years before. It was mainly the idea of a river running through a city and the city changing but the river always keeping its same course.”Jarvis Cocker (514)

“For me, the idea of that song is someone trying to regain control of their life, and it’s not all that easy sometimes.”Jarvis Cocker (514)

“The words… it was a love affair that I had at a period when I wasn’t really that together. I thought that I’d fucked the relationship up because I was fucked up. It was the start of me feeling I had to get a bit more natural. Instead of thinking about everything, just actually feeling things and doing them. Maybe think about them after, rather than working it all out before you even do owt.”Jarvis Cocker (514)

“There was this bloke in the late 60s called Bob Lind. One of his most famous songs is ‘Elusive Butterfly’, which was one of my favourites when I was younger. Something about the sound of this song made me think of him. It was a working title and then I couldn’t think of another one. It’s about someone who is a fuck-up. And sometimes there’s something good about admitting that. Most people who are famous and wealthy tend to be more fucked up than everybody else.”Jarvis Cocker (514)

“Lyrically, it’s about the death of a relationship…”Jarvis Cocker (514)

“They say the darkest hour is just before the dawn, don’t they? I don’t know if it’s true, but they say it. I always hate it when you’ve been at an all-night party and then suddenly the sun starts coming up and you think, ‘Why didn’t I go home an hour ago?’. You feel unnatural because every other creature’s just waking up and the birds start doing the dawn chorus and you feel out of step with nature. So on a simple level the song’s just about trying to react to the sunrise in a better way and not to screw things up for yourself.”Jarvis Cocker (514)