Kris Delmhorst / Appetite / 1998
Weatherman
wry, resigned, defensively honest
A self-aware confession of unreliability, built almost entirely from a string of practical-object metaphors -- umbrella, clothesline, lighthouse, anchor -- each one used to explain why the speaker can't be counted on. The song ends up as a preemptive apology that refuses to actually apologize, since the whole point is that the listener was warned.
emotional unavailability self-knowledge as excuse commitment avoidance honesty versus responsibility inevitability
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses a partner directly, cataloguing their own flaws as if reading from a warranty label. The voice is self-aware to the point of glibness -- believable in its self-diagnosis but questionable in how it uses that diagnosis to dodge blame.
What happens
The song doesn't develop through events so much as through an accumulating list of metaphors, each restating the same warning in a new shape. It moves from mundane objects (umbrella, clothesline) to slightly grander ones (lighthouse, anchor), then pivots to a more direct account of what the speaker is good at -- loving only when there's an exit, listening only when talk has run out. The partner's accusation about reckless, ice-skate living gets folded in and answered with a shrug, and the song closes by literalizing its central metaphor: both parties end up equally drenched, regardless of who was supposed to be sheltered.
How it's built
Verse-driven and cumulative rather than strictly verse/chorus -- the umbrella and clothesline images recur like refrains, and the 'I don't know' passage functions as the closest thing to a chorus, repeating the same shrugging non-answer twice. The song loops back to its opening umbrella verse at the end, then dissolves into a chanted final image, suggesting circularity: nothing has changed, the warning has simply been fulfilled.
Section by section
Opening verse
“full of holes and I do not stay put”
The song opens with its central admission stated almost cheerfully, establishing the tone: flaws delivered as flat fact rather than remorse.
Clothesline verses
The metaphor shifts from failing to shelter to failing to hold anything in place at all -- pinning hopes, tying down -- extending the idea from protection to permanence, and warning that whatever is entrusted to the speaker may simply disappear.
'I don't know' refrain
This section functions as the emotional core, where the speaker stops offering new metaphors and instead falls back on having already warned the listener. It reframes the whole song as an alibi: nothing here is new information, so nothing here should require further explanation.
Lighthouse and anchor verses
The metaphors escalate from small domestic failures to larger, more romantically loaded symbols of guidance and stability, only to undercut them the same way -- inconsistent light, an anchor that drags and releases. The grandiosity of the images makes the disappointment feel more pointed.
'Good' inventory verse
A turn from listing failures to listing conditional strengths -- love, listening, friendship -- each hedged by an escape clause. This is the sharpest moment of self-diagnosis, revealing that the speaker's virtues only appear once an exit is already available.
Ice-skates exchange
The partner's accusation is voiced almost verbatim, giving the song a rare moment of dialogue. The speaker's response doesn't contest the image, just accepts it as an unchangeable trait, reinforcing the fatalism running through the whole piece.
Weatherman line and outro
The title metaphor finally surfaces directly, comparing blame for emotional harm to blaming a forecaster for weather he only predicted. The song then returns to its opening verse and dissolves into a repeated closing image, insisting that the outcome was foretold and now simply shared by both people.
Craft
- extended/serial metaphor
- The speaker defines themselves through a sequence of failed protective objects -- an umbrella, a clothesline, a lighthouse, an anchor -- each metaphor doing double duty as both apology and boundary-setting.
- anaphora
- Repeated openings ('I make a really bad...', 'I make a really good...') build a rhythmic inventory that turns confession into something almost comic, blunting its emotional weight even as it delivers hard truths.
- idiom literalized
- The closing image of both people getting soaked takes the cliché of being left out in the rain and turns it into a shared, inescapable condition rather than a one-sided abandonment.
- proverbial allusion
- The closing comparison to blaming a weatherman for rain reframes the speaker's flaws as forecasted, natural, and therefore not truly their fault -- a rhetorical move that shifts responsibility onto fate or nature.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a portrait of someone using self-awareness as a shield: naming your own flaws in advance doesn't excuse the damage they cause, but the speaker treats disclosure as equivalent to absolution. An alternative, more sympathetic reading hears real grief underneath the deflection -- someone who has learned through repetition that they hurt people despite honest warnings, and who has stopped expecting anything different from themselves. The song doesn't resolve which reading is correct; the closing image of mutual soaking suggests the speaker isn't claiming immunity from consequence, just refusing sole blame for it.
Context
This is from Delmhorst's early solo work within the Boston folk-singer-songwriter scene of the late 1990s; I don't have reliable specific biographical or production details about this song or album beyond that general context, so I'm not asserting any.
Listen for
- how the list-like structure of metaphors builds a rhythm that makes confession feel almost playful
- the shift in tone when the 'good' qualities appear, each one immediately undercut by a condition
- the way the final repeated line turns a one-sided image of abandonment into something shared
- the flat, unapologetic delivery implied by lines that state flaws as settled fact rather than regret
- the return to the opening verse at the end, reinforcing the song's circular, fatalistic logic
About Kris Delmhorst
Kris Delmhorst is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Originally from Brooklyn, New York City, United States, she now lives in Western Massachusetts, is an active member of the Boston folk scene, and tours internationally.
/ United States
Full biography and catalogue