Of Monsters and Men / FEVER DREAM / 2019
Alligator
disoriented, feverish, oscillating between vulnerability and assertion
A short, hallucinatory track that dramatizes the loss and reclamation of control through the imagery of a feverish, almost ritualistic dream. It trades linear narrative for sensation -- color, sound, water, mourning figures -- building an atmosphere rather than telling a story.
loss of control altered consciousness surrender and reclamation ritual/myth imagery restlessness and desire
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addressing an ambiguous 'you,' uncertain of what that other party wants; the voice is unstable and dreamlike, making it an unreliable narrator by design rather than flaw.
What happens
The song opens in a sensory haze, the speaker admitting confusion about another's desires while declaring their own openness. The chorus frames this as a cycle of losing and regaining control. A brief, myth-like interlude describes the speaker being placed in water while mourning women watch, suggesting a symbolic death or transformation. The song then returns to the chorus, ending on the same unresolved fever state it began in, implying repetition rather than resolution.
How it's built
The song is built on a short verse-chorus-bridge loop with minimal lyrical content, functioning more like an incantation than a traditional pop structure. Repetition of the fever-dream refrain anchors the piece, while the brief ritual-imagery bridge interrupts the loop before it collapses back into the chorus, reinforcing a cyclical, trance-like form rather than forward motion.
Section by section
Opening verse
“I see color raining down”
The song begins mid-sensation, dropping the listener into a disoriented perceptual state without context. The speaker's admission of not knowing what the addressee wants establishes both intimacy and uncertainty, setting the emotional stakes before any chorus arrives.
Chorus
The push-pull between losing and taking control is the emotional core of the song. Rather than resolving into one state, the chorus holds both simultaneously, suggesting that surrender and agency aren't opposites here but part of the same immersive experience.
Bridge/ritual imagery
“Twenty-two women stood by the banks”
This section breaks from the abstract sensuality of the rest of the song into something more mythic and specific, though still dreamlike. The precise number of women and the funereal tone suggest a symbolic rite -- possibly death, rebirth, or a passage into an altered emotional or physical state -- without ever clarifying its literal meaning.
Final chorus/outro
The return to the refrain without further development reinforces the cyclical nature of the fever dream -- there's no waking up, only deeper immersion. The repetition becomes almost mantra-like by the end, suggesting the speaker may be caught permanently in this liminal state.
Craft
- extended metaphor
- The fever dream operates as a sustained metaphor for emotional or sexual surrender, where losing and taking control become interchangeable states within the same altered consciousness.
- synesthesia
- Describing color as something that rains down and feeling as something with sound blurs sensory boundaries, mirroring the disorientation of fever.
- ritual imagery
- The image of being laid in a stream under a starlit sky while a group of women cries evokes burial or baptismal rites, suggesting symbolic death, cleansing, or transformation rather than literal narrative.
- repetition/refrain
- The insistent repetition of the fever-dreaming phrase mimics the looping, inescapable quality of a dream state, reinforcing the song's trance-like structure.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as an impressionistic depiction of surrender -- sexual, emotional, or both -- where the fever dream is a metaphor for a liminal psychological state in which control is both lost and willingly ceded. The ritual imagery of the stream and mourning women can be read as a symbolic death of the self prior to transformation, echoing myth or folklore motifs the band has used elsewhere. An alternative reading sees the song as more literally about fever and delirium -- physical illness distorting perception -- with the ritual imagery functioning as actual dream-logic rather than symbolic narrative. Both readings coexist comfortably given the song's resistance to clear resolution.
Context
Of Monsters and Men's FEVER DREAM album marked a shift toward more electronic, atmospheric production compared to the band's earlier folk-pop sound. 'Alligator' fits this shift, trading narrative lyricism for mood and sensation. I don't have reliable information about the specific writing or recording circumstances of this song, so any biographical claims beyond this stylistic context would be speculative.
Listen for
- The shift in vocal texture and production between the verses and the ritualistic bridge section
- How the chorus melody handles the tension between losing and taking control
- The sparse, repetitive lyrical structure compared to the band's earlier, more narrative-driven songs
- The way the ritual imagery is delivered almost as an aside rather than a climax