She's Dead

Another lush yet grim ballad, one that catches the band in something of a transitional period. The execution is more expert than something like “Little Girl (With Blue Eyes),” yet we’re not quite in the polished, near-bombastic territory of, say, “Sylvia.” The band’s not at the point yet where they can afford a real string section, but the synthesized backing just makes the song more poignant, symbolic of something that’s nearly obtainable, but just out of reach. Herein, Jarvis mourns over a broken relationship so thoroughly that it doesn’t matter to him whether she is in fact deceased or just out of his life. It’s all the same to him at this point.