The Waiting Room

"The Prolific and the Devourer: the Artist and the Politician. Let them realize that they are enemies, i.e. that each has a vision of the world which must remain incomprehensible to the other. But let them also realize that they are both necessary and complementary, and furthermore, that there are good and bad politicians, good and bad artists, and that the good must learn to recognize and respect the good." - W.H. Auden, The Prolific and the Devourer 

"This song is sort of a lashing out against the powers that had put our artistic endeavours on hold. The feeling of stagnation and waiting was like being in a cell, a type of waiting room with no escape."  - Matt Slocum

One can conceive of "We Have Forgotten" and "Anything" as songs in and of themselves, but "The Waiting Room" seems to exist only as a part of the suite of the three songs that open the self-titled album -- though it's the third of the trilogy, it feels more interstitial than the other two -- perhaps that's intentional, given its subject matter. Matt Slocum subtitled the opening trio "Exploring the Crisis," and "The Waiting Room" does the most direct grappling with the crisis.

What is "the crisis?" Unlike Auden, Slocum seems to take sides in the Prolific vs. Devourer cage match, placing himself on the side of the angels. In a superficial way, the crisis is that of the band itself, stuck in a bad contract, unable to record their new songs, unsure (a la "Anything") whether it is even worth continuing. But the "feeling of stagnation and waiting" goes far beyond the trouble recording this single album -- it's a constant theme of Slocum's songwriting, from "Within a Room" to "Still Burning" to "Give it Back." On the self-titled record, these problems are eventually resolved by "Love" and "Moving On." But given Sixpence's catalogue, this resolution is, as ever, temporary, and song about the band stuck in indie-label limbo turns out to be a song about the human condition  -- the waiting, the in-between, the long middle, the not-yet.