Broadcast / Haha Sound / 2003
Before We Begin
weary, incantatory, quietly resigned
A brief, incantatory song built around the idea of cyclical return -- endings that are secretly beginnings, superstition standing in for hope. Broadcast use ritual imagery (spilled salt, thrown-over-shoulder gestures) to describe a relationship or moment that keeps resetting itself rather than resolving.
cyclical time superstition and ritual emotional exhaustion fatalism vs hope repetition and stasis
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addressing a 'you' directly involved in the same recurring situation; the voice is intimate but detached, as though narrating a ritual it has performed many times before and no longer fully believes in.
What happens
The song doesn't tell a linear story so much as describe a loop: an ending that folds back into a beginning, a superstitious gesture performed to ward off bad luck, a moment of hesitant communication between two people who might be on opposite sides of an argument or distance. By the final verse the exact opening lines return, confirming that the 'again' is not metaphorical but structural -- the speaker is back at the same starting point.
How it's built
Short verses alternate with a refrain built on the phrase 'again,' which functions almost like a chorus made of a single word. The lyric's own architecture mimics its subject: the final verse repeats the first almost verbatim, so the song enacts the return it describes rather than just naming it.
Section by section
Opening verse
The speaker locates themselves at a point that is simultaneously an ending and a beginning, immediately establishing the song's temporal knot. The superstitious gesture that follows suggests an attempt to manage bad luck or misfortune through ritual rather than action.
First refrain
“fortune or sorrow”
The pairing collapses hope and dread into the same unresolved future, refusing to let the listener know which outcome is more likely. The admission that follows -- of already knowing how this plays out -- undercuts any real suspense, suggesting fatigue rather than anticipation.
Second verse
The imagined positioning of two people on opposite sides, with one asked to wait for the other's word, suggests a strained or careful negotiation, possibly emotional distance within a couple or collaborators. The hesitation built into speech itself becomes part of the ritual.
Later refrain
“now it feels empty”
This is the clearest shift in the song: the superstitious hope of the earlier refrain gives way to plain deflation. The ritual continues but its emotional charge has drained out, leaving repetition without belief.
Closing verse
The return to the opening language confirms the loop is complete. Rather than closing the song, it simply restarts the cycle, ending on the same suspended threshold where it began.
Craft
- circular structure
- The opening lines reappear near the end almost unchanged, so the form itself loops back, reinforcing the theme of beginnings that are really re-beginnings.
- folk superstition as extended metaphor
- The image of spilled salt and throwing it over one's shoulder stands in for attempts to control or ward off an uncertain future, tying private anxiety to inherited ritual.
- minimal refrain
- The recurring word 'again' works almost like a percussive tic, punctuating each stanza and turning repetition into the song's central formal device rather than just its subject.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as being about a relationship or a recurring emotional pattern -- possibly a fight, a farewell, or a ritualized reconciliation -- that never actually progresses; each 'ending' just resets to the same start. The superstition imagery frames this less as psychological insight than as folk magic, treating fate as something to be nudged rather than understood. An alternative reading takes it more abstractly, as a meditation on performance or repetition itself -- songs, rituals, or arguments that must be gone through again and again regardless of outcome, with the 'you' being almost incidental to the loop's mechanics.
Context
Haha Sound (2003) sits within Broadcast's mid-period work, where Trish Keenan's lyrics often drew on folk-horror imagery, occult ephemera, and analogue psychedelia rather than direct confessional narrative. I don't have specific documented background on the writing of this particular song, so this reading is based on the text and the band's broader lyrical tendencies rather than confirmed biographical or production detail.
Listen for
- the way the melody and lyric both return to their starting point rather than resolving upward
- the shift in tone between the earlier hopeful refrain and its later, more deflated repetition
- the sparse arrangement leaving space around the word 'again,' making it feel ritualistic
- how the superstition imagery is delivered flatly, without irony or explanation
About Broadcast
Broadcast were an English band formed in Birmingham in 1995 by Trish Keenan and James Cargill (bass). Their musical style blended elements of 1960s psychedelic songwriting with early electronic music and samples from esoteric sources.
1995 - present / Birmingham
Full biography and catalogue