Long Nights

Have no fear
For when I'm alone
I'll be better off than I was before

I've got this light
I'll be around to grow
Who I was before
I cannot recall

Long nights allow me to feel...
I'm falling...I am falling
The lights go out
Let me feel
I'm falling
I am falling safely to the ground
Ah...

I'll take this soul that's inside me now
Like a brand new friend
I'll forever know

I've got this light
And the will to show
I will always be better than before

Long nights allow me to feel...
I'm falling...I am falling
The lights go out
Let me feel
I'm falling
I am falling safely to the ground



Eddie gets incredible atmosphere out of such a simple song. The pattern he plays sounds like twinkling songs, the echo in his voice sounds like it’s coming out of a dark, empty, open spaces. The simple bass part gives it a heaviness that weighs the song down, and the whole thing has a difficult peace to it—the solitude here is both liberating and a burden, almost like he is happy where he is but he’s paid a terrible cost to get there.

Vocally this is an excellent performance. His voice manages to keep the deep timbre that is his signature while making space for the cracks within it that have appeared with age. I’d love to hear more songs that sound like this.

Lyrically the chorus is nice—falling is usually a violent image, but he manages to cushion it well here. The song has a gentle movement to it and the chorus reflects it. I like the clever passivity here—the long nights LET him feel free, but the choice is theirs. There is a way in which the subject is not really free, even though this is meant to be a song about freedom (compare it to the far more liberated No Ceiling). It matches the uneasiness in the music. The rest of this is Eddie in his full blown spiritual mode, and this is rarely when he’s at his best. Any lyric where Eddie uses the word soul (or growth metaphors) are usually ones to walk away from. Having said that, there are some decent lines here. I do like the lyrics about needing to forget who you were before you can become someone knew, and how this process of self discovery shouldn’t be scary, even though the music makes this a kind of false bravado (not that these lyrics are delivered in a particularly self confident way)

I can’t quite bring myself to give this song 4 stars, and I’m not sure why. It might be because the song never goes anywhere, and I prefer movement. It’s a very cool atmospheric piece nevertheless.

My favourite song off Into The Wild. I love the music and these are lyrics I can totally relate to.

This is a song where the lyrics and the music never really matched up for me. I'm usually a fan of music juxtaposing with the lyrical content (Do The Evolution is probably PJ's best example of this), but for whatever reason, it sinks this song a bit for me. As stip said, it's such a spritual, expansive song, with an open, if not overtly positive, lyric. But the music and melody is, to me, one of the darkest and most foreboding things Eddie's ever written. I like the music alot, but it just doesn't fit together for me.

5 starrrssssss.
Best song on Into the wild.

I love the guitar (mandolin? something else?) , and i love eddie's voice on it. ...and the bass...and the echoey percussion at the end.

I hope he pulls this one out live eventually.
I really love eddie's slow atmopspheric songs -this one, dead man , parting ways. Here's hoping he writes a couple more.


I'll take this soul that's inside me now
Like a brand new friend
I'll forever know

I always thought that was 'hole', though, now reading the rest of the lyrics (which i've never bothered to do ) soul makes more sense.

Slight correction : The best song that is not a cover on Into the wild.

Kind of reminds me of the verses in Gone. It's a little too dark and sparse..Never took to this one at all. 2 stars

that's a good observation, Dime. I can totally hear that now. I like long nights a lot more though

Cheers. It's one of those musical links I hear in their songs that nobody else seems to hear.

It's a good song, I should like it a whole lot more than I do as it's Ed doin what he does best in exploring his depths alone, usually I love when he does these types of songs but this one never grabbed me for whatever reason.
He's never played this live right? Probably cos of the yawping yokels in the audience. It's one of the quietest things he's ever written.

I would have loved to see him do this one live.

5 star song for me.

Five stars, without a doubt.

I think this is one of the best songs Ed's ever written.

The imagery, the sound, the atmosphere - they all really gel on this one for me.

Good melody, but I'd like it a little bit more with some added instrumentation in the background.

I really like the atmosphere of the recording. And the relentless picking pattern throughout is really nice. The lyrics are probably the only thing holding this back from being a 5 star song for me.

Just as an aside, for all the people who think that PJ have declined in the last decade, it's worth considering how strong Ed's writing has been in the last 3 years. You could compile the best of Into The Wild with his Backspacer tunes and get a decent, strong record:

The Wolf
Rise
Unthought Known
Long Nights
Speed Of Sound (demo)
No Ceiling
Just Breathe
Guaranteed
The End

Oh, absolutely - I think Ed's written some of the best stuff of his career in the last few years. Thing is, I think almost all of it is best suited to a solo career - I don't think he's come up with great band tracks like Grievance or Insignificance lately.

I'm really excited about the prospect of more Ed solo material if it means a) we'll get more records like Into the Wild and b) if it means he stops wasting great tunes like Speed of Sound on the band.

That's probably fair. Saying that I do really like Gonna See My Friend and Severed Hand, but they're not in the same league as his Binaural 'band' songs (Insignificance, Grievance, Sad...Parting Ways even).

Ed's output > other members' output in the last 10 years.

I can't believe all Stone brought to the table was Amongst The Waves and Supersonic to the last record - that was really disappointing for me.

i never listen to Into the Wild, but if memory serves, this was a favorite. 4 stars!

Eddie's had some of his highest highs and lowest lows in the past ten years, and it's bizarre how much his strengths have shifted. For me, the albums in the 90s up to and including Binaural, Eddie's strengths were in the rockers. With Corduroy, Insignificance, Grievance, Rearviewmirror, and others, he was excellent at combining PJ's punk influences and the band's anthemic qualities. His quieter songs were good, but not highlights in the way these were (with exceptions like Immortality). For the more recent albums, it's almost switched around. Songs like Green Disease, Severed Hand, and Gonna See My Friend do nothing for me and are lowlights, and I find myself gravitating towards stuff like Can't Keep, I Am Mine, and some of the ITW stuff.

I like those songs, but I wish Eddie's talents at rockers would come back; he was really, really good at them.

The piano coulda made this song. The guitar is great. The vocal and bass. The percussion. Even the goddamn reverb.

But the piano was like one or two gentle flourished ideas away from a great track, and it should have offered it easy.

One or two ideas.

I really like the melody and the music and Ed's voice but the verse lyrics are pretty weak. 4 stars still.

Into the wild is better than backspacer and S/T

It is, yeah.