Deerhunter / Fading Frontier / 2015
Snakeskin
defiant but weary, almost incantatory
A funk-inflected litany of self-definition, "Snakeskin" strings together a series of blunt "I was born" and "I was" declarations that read like a resume of affliction and survival. It's less a story than a series of snapshots of a body and identity marked from birth, delivered with a strange buoyancy that contrasts with the grim content.
disability and bodily difference fatalism versus resilience identity as inherited condition isolation and institutionalization transformation and shedding
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker recounts his own life in a string of flat, declarative statements, addressed to no one in particular -- more confession or litany than dialogue. The voice is unreliable in the sense that it moves between literal biographical detail and surreal, dreamlike imagery without signaling which is which.
What happens
The song opens with a rapid-fire account of the speaker's birth conditions -- marked, burdened, different from the start. It shifts into a dreamier middle section full of hallucinatory imagery, then lands in a concrete, grim setting suggesting institutional confinement, before ending on an admission of loneliness and plainness that undercuts any triumphant reading.
How it's built
Built almost entirely from anaphoric "I was" clauses in quatrains, the song has no traditional chorus -- instead each verse functions as a fresh inventory of self, escalating from birth to dream-logic to a bleak present. The lack of a hook or refrain reinforces the sense of a list that could keep extending indefinitely.
Section by section
Opening verse
“born already nailed to the cross”
The song begins with birth itself as a wound -- the speaker frames his existence as already burdened, already marked, before any action of his own. This sets the tone of fatalism that runs through the whole piece.
Second verse
The imagery grows more abstract and racially and physically specific, invoking both bodily impairment and a kind of geographic or ancestral blackness, suggesting the speaker's identity is bound up with inherited history as much as personal circumstance.
Third verse
“lost my marbles all over the pink”
The dream imagery here turns cartoonish and unstable, using absurd, almost comic phrasing to describe a mental unraveling, while the search for an engaged line suggests a desperate, failed attempt to connect or communicate.
Closing verse
“home for the aged and lonely”
The song lands in a concrete, bleak setting -- an institution for the elderly or infirm -- collapsing the dreamlike surrealism into something starkly literal. The final line's admission of plainness deflates any grandeur the earlier religious imagery might have suggested, ending on ordinary sadness rather than transcendence.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated 'I was born' and 'I was' openings turn the verses into a chant-like inventory, making identity sound predetermined rather than chosen.
- religious allusion
- An early image of being nailed to the cross frames the speaker's suffering as almost predestined, echoing martyrdom without claiming any redemptive purpose.
- surreal imagery
- Dream sequences involving a man with a neon back and a heart attack destabilize the otherwise plain, declarative language, suggesting the speaker's inner life exceeds literal description.
- juxtaposition
- Clinical or institutional language sits against dreamlike or grotesque images, mirroring a mind moving between lucidity and disorientation.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a meditation on physical and social marginalization -- possibly inflected by the songwriter's own experience of a genetic condition -- rendered through a mix of literal autobiography and dream logic, refusing easy sentimentality. An alternative reading hears it more abstractly, as a portrait of any life experienced as predetermined and alien to itself, with the specific images functioning symbolically rather than autobiographically.
Context
Deerhunter's Bradford Cox has spoken publicly about living with Marfan syndrome, and much of his songwriting circles around embodiment, otherness, and fragility; "Snakeskin" appears on Fading Frontier, an album often described as more outward-facing and groove-oriented than earlier Deerhunter records, mixing personal vulnerability with a danceable, almost glam-funk arrangement. I'm not certain of specific biographical details behind this particular song, so this reading leans on general knowledge of the band's recurring preoccupations rather than confirmed authorial intent.
Listen for
- the rhythmic, almost spoken-word delivery of the 'I was' lines against the funky groove
- the tonal shift from birth imagery to dreamlike hallucination in the middle verses
- the deflating plainness of the final line after the more surreal imagery preceding it
- how the arrangement's buoyancy contrasts with the bleakness of the lyric content
About Deerhunter
Deerhunter is an American indie rock band from Atlanta, Georgia, formed in 2001. The band's most recent line-up consisted of Bradford Cox, Moses Archuleta, Lockett Pundt, Josh McKay (bass) and Javier Morales.
2001 - present / United States
Full biography and catalogue