Like many Death Cab songs, this one is somber in tone and equally as sorrowful and quasi-nostalgic in subject matter. Gibbard sings of change (or perhaps a better term is deterioration) and regret.
With every sun that sets, I am feeling more
Like a stranger on a foreign shore
With an eroding beach disappearing from underneath
And when my mirror speaks, it never minces words
'Cause these eyes don't shine half as bright
As they used to do and they haven't for quite a while
'Cause I'm a man who hides from all that binds
And a mess of fading lines
And there's a tangled thread inside my head
With nothing on either end
I always fall in love with an open door
With a horizon on an endless sea
As I look around the ones who were standing right in front of me
And then my mirror speaks with irreverence
Like a soldier I can't command
As it sees a frightened child in the body of a full-grown man
And he's a man who hides from all that binds
And a mess of fading lines
And there's a tangled thread inside his head
With nothing on either end
There's nothing on the ends
A new position for a different view
And nothing changes but the slightest hues
And I am standing face to face
With a man who hides from all that binds
And a mess of fading lines
And there's a tangled thread inside his head
With nothing on either end
Well, I'm a man who hides from all that binds
And a mess of fading lines
And there's a tangled thread inside my head
With nothing on either end
'Cause I'm a man who hides from all that binds
And a mess of fading lines
And there's a tangled thread inside my head
With nothing on either end
There's nothing on the ends
No, there's nothing on the ends
My Mirror Speaks was written by Benjamin Gibbard & Nick Harmer.
My Mirror Speaks was produced by Chris Walla.
Death Cab for Cutie released My Mirror Speaks on Tue Mar 31 2009.