Moving Too Fast
From The Messy Middle
Moving Too Fast
If ‘Here to Be Watched’ is the album looking in the mirror, ‘Moving Too Fast’ is the moment the mirror cracks. The distorted guitars and compressed, claustrophobic mix turn the doom-scroll experience into something you can actually feel in your chest, and arriving at track six the arrangement feels like a gear-change the sequence has been building toward. The chorus lands hard, ‘I’m losing the game but I thought I was winning’ delivered with just enough breathlessness that it sounds lived-in rather than written, and the sudden silence at the end is the smartest thirty seconds on the track. At a punishing pace in a bright major key, the tonal dissonance between the key and the content mirrors exactly what the lyric is describing. It’s the kind of overstimulation anthem that Paramore or early Metric might have staked a whole album on, and STAB pulls it off in under three minutes. The silence at its end also does something useful for the track that follows: it creates the emptiness ‘Harder Than I Thought’ walks into.
Lyrics
(Up, up, down, down, scroll)
I'm thumbing through a decade in a minute and a half I see a tragedy, then I see a viral laugh There's no time to feel it, there's no time to think I'm trying to take a sip, but I'm falling in the sink (whoa) The colors are blurring, the headlines are screaming I can't tell if I'm awake or if I'm just dreaming
The floor is moving and the walls are spinning I'm losing the game but I thought I was winning I can't catch my breath, I can't make it last Everything is moving too fast
My eyes are getting heavy but I can't look away I've forgotten what I've done with the middle of the day It's a frictionless slide, it's a bottomless hole And I'm losing every bit of my self-control (just one more) (maybe just one more) The sun went down and I didn't even notice
The floor is moving and the walls are spinning I'm losing the game but I thought I was winning I can't catch my breath, I can't make it last Everything is moving too fast
(Wait) (Hold on) (Stop the feed) The world is a blur, the world is a rush I'm looking for a pause, I'm looking for a hush But the wheel keeps turning (faster) (faster!)
The floor is moving and the walls are spinning I'm losing the game but I thought I was winning I can't catch my breath, I can't make it last Everything is moving too fast
(Too fast) (It's all moving) (Everything is moving too fast) (Sudden silence)