Pepper in the Wind

Track five shifts the sound - cold, mechanical, a 1980 Manchester bleakness - and it shifts the subject from the man behind the glass to the thing he and every other religious man keeps trying to do. You stir the air, you shake the flame, you think the gust will make you change. That is the human project in four lines. Self-improvement dressed as sanctification. And the song's verdict is its title: it is pepper in the wind.

The image is merciless and it is meant to be. You sprinkle hope like pepper rain, you think the taste will make you clean. You can throw your zeal, your fervour, your passion as hard as you want - it scatters, it slips through, it is never you. The pre-chorus says the thing religion does not want to hear: what you clothe in white is still the same within. Nothing made pure by what you think you bring. You cannot become what you are not in. Effort cannot change a nature.

And then the bridge does what the whole album does - it goes quiet, and in the quiet the answer arrives, and it is not a better technique. Not by fervour, not by claims. Only mercy, only grace, drops like rain in broken place. That is the turn. The wind cannot be chased and the storm cannot be controlled, but mercy is not something you chase. It falls. His mercy falls and makes you whole. You stop throwing the pepper when you finally see Who was sending the rain.