[NoBonesGuy]

I wrote the second lyrics version, and they are correct. I had to listen a bazillion times to make out
“The vast expanses will leech you dry”, which I am 100% sure is correct (although I misspelled it, so did you guys). I am 100% on “You’ll shiver all summer”. It is correct phoneme by phoneme, and it makes sense in context. I don’t understand how people insert extra syllables. J sings punk songs like a country singer, with an artificial drawl. He stretches syllables obscenely.

I am Reasonably sure about “The need to grind, they’ll summon”, I would be 100% if it weren’t for the off pronounciation of summon, it would be ok, but it is a reasonable fit.

In order to make out the lyrics, you have to understand them. The song is consistently addressed to a woman, from a male narrator (perhaps a stand in for some hard drug like heroin). The song is revealing that the narrator will not protect the woman from “the vast expanses” (like the water in “the water”). The line “no bones, no form” is a J-ism for no tentpole, no tent. It’s actually quite poignant, and in the abstract style people liked back then, like Michael Stipe’s early lyrics.

The shivering in the summer is actually a pretty good construction, which calls to mind some sort of drug withdrawal, either literally or as a metaphor. The summer is like youth, or just shivering in warm weather, which is sickness itself. It’s very eerie, again abstraction. This type of lyric was used at that time, for example, in “Hippie hole” by the Faith Healers UK, they say “take some of this, shake for hours.”

“If there only was a when” is a rhyme fill to “can’t put you there again”. I agree that “if there only was a way” makes more sense, but singers sometimes throw in a nonobvious soundalike word, just to add diversity and perhaps fix an imperfect rhyme. The sense is surely “If there only was a way” in either interpretation, only the phonemes are “if there only was a when”. It depends on whether you are transcribing the sound, or the meaning.

I am sorry, but J-Mascis is definitely drawling out “right”, and the construction “can’t feel right” is correct in a country style song for this situation. The construction, “can’t feel, not today” is limp and powerless, especially considering that he is feeling a lot by singing this! He just can’t feel “right”, meaning feel the right emotion.

As for “can’t handle either way” or “can’t handle you their way”, I lean towards the latter, even though it is the weaker of the two. The reason is that this is a second person song— there is a person this is sung to, and I think the intent with the “they” is to produce an abstract feeling of other people, who are just the typical, while he would like to be then exceptional.

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