Powder Keg

(1)

You better listen

You better listen
It's thin
It's a powder keg.
You better listen to me.

Take me home.
I don't want to go.
Take me back to the safe.
You know better.
You better listen.
It's a powder keg.
You better listen.

Retreat from Enniskillen (2)

I had a dream
Bruised and coloured
It going to hurt me
Manchester city center
Caroline      (3)
Take me back, I can't get the bus.
You know what they say.
Retreat from Enniskillen

You better listen he's a powder keg.
You better listen to me

Sickening in its infection.
His radioactive radio head drips with powder (4)
His aura, red halo.
Thin!
Listen to me.
Thin!
Retreat from Enniskillen.

Head loaded people avoid bad luck.
Hives away.
Confined to the university end of town.
Made powder, made retreat from Enniskillen.

I don't want to go.
Take me home
Take me back to town, Mark.
Don't you know,
Town is a powder keg.

1. I try not to clog up the notes with too much speculation about "pre-cog" nonsense, but it is impossible to avoid in this case since the song is so closely associated with the bombing in Manchester of June 15, 1996 (five days after the release of The Light User Syndrome). The song may refer to imminent violence (it would surely be going too far to say "the imminent violence"), although an equally plausible interpretation of the song is that it is about drug abuse. In any case, MES himself has more than once weighed in on this question, and while he doesn't dismiss the "pre-cog" talk entirely, neither does he seem to take it very seriously (the following is originally from The Wire):

"I've got a funny story to tell you," he begins, "about the song "Powder Keg" on the last LP [The Light User Syndrome] It was about the Manchester bombing and all that The Sun kept ringing me up going, 'It's really weird this song of yours: "Manchester's a  powder keg"'. It's typical Sun stuff, they don't get off the bleeding phone I'm going, 'Well, it's a song I wrote' And they go, 'Well, it's funny that a bomb in Manchester went off last week and you actually said Manchester is a powder keg. How did you know about i t?' It's 10 o'clock in the morning 'And also you wrote this song about Terry Waite years ago ' And I'm going, 'Yeah, you know ' And I didn't realise this, but they started insinuating that I had inside information 'It's funny that you knew about Terry Waite's kidnapping, in this song "Terry Waite Sez" in 1986, and then you wrote this song called "Powder Keg" about the Manchester bombing ' And I'm thinking that I'm talking to people like you, but I'm talking to some slime, you know. And I'm going, 'Well, yeah, I don't know why it happened, maybe I'm prophetic, you know, because I was a psychic when I was a teenager ' they say, 'So you were psychic about Terry Waite, now you're psychic about the Manchester bomb.' I'm going, 'Yeah, yeah, get off the phone, I've got things to do, I've got my life to lead I don't want to talk to you ' So then the fucking Daily Star gets in on the act- 'Oh, you're the man who knew about Terry Waite and the Manchester bomb. . .' I just said, 'Well, I'm a fucking psychic, fuck off .'"

To be clear about where I'm coming from, I do not categorically reject the slim possibility of some sort of pre-cognition--I'm not here to litigate metaphysics--but the details are invariably too vague to warrant dragging in a supernatural explanation for any of MES's lyrics. As the old saw goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and these lyrics don't come anywhere close to reaching that standard, even taking into account the fact that this is not a scientific investigation. 

Dan points out that the "bombing" angle seems to be strictly ex post facto, however:
"Big Issue dated 8 August 1996 (presumably the interview was conducted some time previously, or it would have gone differently):
 

There's a track on the album called Powder Keg, which is presumably about Manchester. Does he think it is a volatile city?

"Only because there's loads of fucking outsiders coming here," he says sourly. "Like yourself. I thought it was really good about that Oasis thing at Maine Road," he decides. "Oasis go on about how they used to be car thieves or whatever, but if you want to romanticise crime, you have to expect some sort of comeback. They glorify yob culture. Well, Maine Road is the reality. Oasis go on about how they support Man City, they don't even come from Manchester. They come from Cheshire. I prefer Yorkies to professional Manes. Manchester's a shit-hole, man. That's what all my songs are about, about how crap the place is. I'm trying to warn people, if you think about it."

On the other hand, in a video interview from June 1996 (it was not published, but it can be found at Youtube, and is for now at least available in comment #20 below), MES claims the song is about his sister being close to the scene of an IRA bombing in 1992 (Dan: "what he seems to be implying is that although it was formally about or inspired by his sister's prior bomb experience, it is weird that he chose to write about it given the recent bombing."). And Dan submits:

From Brix on Twitter, 18 April 2020:

https://twitter.com/Brixsmithstart/status/1251533982392516608?s=19 :
 

When writing Powderkeg I titled it, and wrote the lyric for the chorus. Mark added the verse lyrics. Just after its release the Arndale bombing happened.

The Arndale is a shopping center in Manchester that was completed in 1979, and hit with a bomb in 1996 (and was also mentioned in "The N.W.R.A.").

^

2. The IRA detonated a bomb in the Northern Irish town of Enniskillen on November 8th, 1987 (Remembrance Sunday, a holiday to honor British war veterans). Enniskillen was also the site of the Battle of Newtownbutler in 1680, when troops of the recently deposed Catholic James II attacked the Protestant force that was garrisoned there and were loyal to the King, the Protestant William of Orange (aspects of the history of this period are also touched on in "Backdrop" and "Kurious Oranj"). The Jacobites were ultimately repulsed.

^

3.  MES has a sister named Caroline. 

^

4. Possibly, or possibly not, an allusion to the band Radiohead...

^

Powder Keg: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 1996

From Fit and Working Again:

The first half of the "Powderkex" version has an alternate vocal & different lines with a change from "his" to "its":

Its radioactive radio-head drips dust
Its aura bruise-coloured
Litmus screamed
It was not neg.
It was not neg.
It was not neg.