Cryptic Cretins

May is equally cryptic about the songs he wrote for the album. "Just relationships, friendships, nothing specific," he says.

But surely "Where Did You Go?" means something specific: "Where did you go, no one knows, why did you stay for so long?/When did we part, burnout, memory serves me wrong/Could empty lines on a dark highway get you through the night?/Could a truck stop parking lot be the end of the line?"

"Well, it was just me thinking about a friend who has a habit of disappearing and me worrying and being jealous at the same time," says May a couple of nights later at band practice. And where does this friend go?

"You know, wherever. He'll call me from Olympia, and then he'll call me from Phoenix."

Suddenly Harrington, adjusting something on his keyboard, perks up: "He's not following the Phish tour, is he?"

And this is how it is for Lomax Monk, flirting with that which is serious but then skating away in the nick of time.

You really can't blame them. It's quite possible that they've got the kind of heart-wrenching, tragic, destructive, life-altering shit in their past that they're not entirely comfortable putting into the hands of a stranger, let alone a journalist. So for now, we'll allow them that.

"Geoff's able to write some very, very incredible songs," says Fletcher. "But at the same time, he's removed from it. He's involved, and yet outside it at the same time. It creates a cool—I don't know—a cool mystery to the songs, I think."