"One and One Make Five" (1993)

[listen]

What I've always liked about this song is the turn of phrase in the title, which at first makes it sound like someone is just dumb or something. But there's a story here, another sad one on an album that features them, about a philandering partner who has just been caught again. I like the compression, proceeding to the inevitable via logic. The singer is adding up the clues, and then comes the flash of understanding, jumping to the number of betrayals it makes, and it's not a trivial number (5). On the album it provides a kind of light palate cleanser after the big stagy production of "The Theatre" and before "To Speak Is a Sin," an equally big production but different in tone. "One and One Make Five" comes across as one of the most frivolous tracks here, relatively short and with gimmicks, except for this sadness, which is experienced in the context of Very almost like a flavor of candy, cherry sadness vs. lemon-lime vs. blue raspberry. I like it—I like everything on the album. But it's a bit overdone in patches ("... giddy-up giddy-up giddy-up ..." etc.) (actually "here we go" but the moral equivalent of "giddy-up"), and it doesn't particularly add up to much. But what am I saying? It's good on relationships and the discussions therein. The singer, the betrayed one, can't believe his beloved homely comforts could be boring and foolish to his partner. The singer is the fool, and he doesn't know it completely quite yet. He is practically learning even as we listen. Thus it is poignant. But the singer also seems callow and smug. It sounds like he won't accommodate anything but his homely comforts. He could even be using them to imprison his partner. We don't know. It is just fragments of a bad relationship passing by.