‘Half Light II (No Celebration)’ keeps us in the 80s, musically speaking, with a synth-bass concoction that sounds a lot like New Order.

But lyrically, the song jumps ahead in time. The kid who ran around his suburban neighborhood at dusk in ‘Half Life I’ has since left home for the east coast. But now he is invited back and finds that the town where he spent his youth has changed.

I’ve read speculation that the narrator of this tale has been called back home because a parent is dying. He references being left in a “home which has no life” and reaching a day he knew would come, when he sees through “a dead man’s eyes.”

That analysis could be spot on, though this could also be a metaphorical death, both spiritual and financial (the economic recession is referenced earlier in the song).

‘Half Light II (No Celebration)’ is the eighth song on a 16-track album, making it the end of side one if such thing as sides still existed. Whether that was the intention or not, it does feel like a culmination of the ideas expressed in the first seven songs.