Mercer has said in an AMA on Reddit that the song is about “mortality and all the emotions and thoughts that humans face dealing with it.”
One hand on this wily comet
Take a drink just to give me some weight
Some uber-man I'd make
I'm barely a vapor
They shone a chlorine light on
A host of individual sins
Let's carve my aging face off
Fetch us a knife
Start with my eyes
Down so the lines
Form a grimacing smile
Close your eyes to corral a virtue
Is this fooling anyone else?
Never worked so long and hard
To cement a failure
We can blow on our thumbs and posture
But the lonely are such delicate things
The wind from a wasp could blow them
Into the sea
With stones on their feet
Lost to the light and the loving we need
Still to come
The worst part and you know it
There is a numbness
In your heart and it's growing
With burnt sage and a forest of bygones
I click my heels
Get the devils in line
A list of things I could lay the blame on
Might give me a way out
But with each turn
It's this front and center
Like a dart stuck square in your eye
Every post you can hitch your faith on
Is a pie in the sky
Chock full of lies
A tool we devise
To make sinking stones fly
And still to come
The worst part and you know it
There is a numbness
In your heart and it's growing
A Comet Appears was written by James Mercer.
A Comet Appears was produced by Joe Chiccarelli.
The Shins released A Comet Appears on Tue Jan 23 2007.