Fluorescent Grey EP - Music and Lyrics

Music and Lyrics

Unlike Cryptograms, Fluorescent Grey does not contain any ambient tracks. Lead singer Bradford Cox considers the EP's four tracks to be "four singles; they're all four good. They could stand on their own." The songs were recorded while Cryptograms was being mixed; their sound has been described as "tightly song-focused, not as drifting or dreamy" as Cryptograms. Cox had considered including these tracks on the next Deerhunter record instead of releasing them on their own. However, he wanted the band's next album to be "something totally different" from Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey.

As with Cryptograms, Cox did not write the lyrics to the band's music in advance, instead singing stream-of-consciousness. The lyrics of Fluorescent Grey carry themes of death and the decomposition of the human body. Cox used the term "Fluorescent Grey"—also the title of the EP's opening track—to describe the color of decaying flesh. He has described the lyrics of the song as being "about panic attacks, lust, and existential dread." "Dr. Glass", in which Cox sings of "so many useless bodies…in the world", is characterized as "more existential dread on a global scale". Cox has said that the EP's third track, "Like New," is "about waking up one day after a long period of depression and finding the world somehow more bearable and kind of ‘new’ and exciting again." The fourth and final song on Fluorescent Grey, "Wash Off," describes Cox's encounters with an "uppity hippie kid" who sold him counterfeit acid as a teenager, insisting that Cox was not open-minded enough for the drug to affect him. As the song ends, Cox repeats the phrase "I was sixteen".