-PART ONE-
tl;dr In Rainbows is about a human life and about life itself. The album itself completes a circle of life, one complete human life cycle. It begins with a human's birth and progresses chronologically through that human's life. (There is a separate, side storyline within, involving animals.) The human conceives and gives birth to a second human and dies.
I have tons of actual lyrical corroboration for this nutty theory. Here are the nuts and bolts first...
Birth is quite literal, simply the physical embodiment of a soul. Life involves aging, procreation, and most of all, a passionate spiritual struggle between a dark side of confusion and emptiness, and a light side of spirituality and aligning with the Universal Deity.
Here's where it gets a bit tricky: a secondary, parallel narrative emerges at the end of song 4 and lasts for two songs. To distinguish, I label the original first one "Allegory" and the second, new one "Literal". The aforementioned dark/light duality in life is echoed in the middle two songs by these dual narratives of human life (allegory) and animal life (literal). The secondary storyline resolves to completion at the end of song 6.
We then return to the human who then faces mortality, procreates via the act of sex, and gives birth to a child. Finally, after giving birth, the protagonist's Death is also quite literally represented as the end, the completion of this cycle. ...That's the gist. Here we go!
So 15 Step and Bodysnatchers depict the beginning: birth and early life.
"how come I end up where I started?" = when I die I return to the void of wherever it is I was before I was born
"reel me out" and "cut the string" = the birth event and the severing of the umbilical cord, but also eventually the cutting of the string of life (death).
"did your string come undone?" = your string is your umbilical cord attachment to your mother. The question here is "were you born?" and the answer to "what happened?" in the previous line is, yes, you were born. Thom is breaking the fourth wall here so to speak and engaging his listeners directly on the matter of our own individual births. This is supported by the following "us" as he is talking about himself and all of us listeners.
"sheer drop" = emerging from or dropping out of the womb to be born, but also the drop of death (see the later drop to the bottom of the ocean).
"I do not understand what it is, I've done wrong" = refers to original sin (see next part of the narrative for corroboration). Humans being born are not (fully) aware about the nature of original sin or the "fact" that they have inherited it when they were born.
"full of holes" = tricky. The first thought might be bullet holes or something, but this simply refers to the windows of consciousness, i.e. the eyes, ears, mouth all being holes in a person's head/skull. The line "blink your eyes" connects to and supports this interpretation.
"I've no idea what I am talking about" = young babies use their mouth to make sounds, and they can in a sense talk, but the sounds are not rendered in a sensible manner to themselves, because the referents in the world to which they attempt to refer to haven't been grasped by their consciousness yet.
"I'm trapped in this body" = My soul or spirit has been physically embodied into the body within which it resides and others see as 'me'
"the sound" = the sound of the mother's heartbeat when inside the womb, prior to birth. That sound has been killed because I am born and do not hear it anymore.
Nude & Weird Fishes+ are general descriptions of a spiritual struggle followed by an acquiescence.
(Nude) the psychic struggles during life...
"don't get any big ideas, they're not gonna happen" = being ambitious and failing
"there'll be something missing" = the feeling of emptiness
"you'll go to hell for..." = the fear of condemnation
"...you've found it, it's gone" & "...you feel it, you don't" = confusion
(Weird Fishes) ...leading to a symbolic "death to the world" acheived through a ritualistic baptism (see also TKOL-Codex)
"why should I stay here?" = indecision and inaction about Earthly life ("here" being Earth)
"I'd be crazy not to follow where you lead" = the Deity/Great Spirit/God/Jesus/etc. is the guide (the way) to heaven
"turn" = convert. Jesus's eyes (or another follower's or believer's eyes) convert the person into becoming a believer.
"phantoms" = the Holy Ghost/Saints/angels/my personal guardian angel
"this is my chance (to leave)" = to pass from this Earthly realm onto heaven. "this" is the initiation or conversion (a "turning" towards God/the Deity/etc.)
+At this point, to be precise, right when the drums stop and the line "I get eaten by the worms" is sung, I suggest a temporary split into two separate narrative interpretations that lasts the next two songs. The first allegorically begins with the depiction of a vivid escapism fantasy but no death, and the second begins literally with an actual death by drowning or ashes being scattered into the ocean and being eaten by worms and fishes. The allegory continues with the human's spiritual quest, and the literal story relates successive animal birth-death reincarnations. The lyrical quote lists below primarily follow the allegory storyline (A), but literal interpretations (L) are given as well.
All I Need advances the dual narrative introduced above.
Allegorically: the person who has been "baptized" (initiated) reaches the point of maturing towards active seeking of union with the Deity/God/Great Spirit/etc. Some spiritual struggle is still present, due to a lingering emptiness carried over from the previous song's lyrics, i.e. the baptised/initiated/converted/'turned' is nevertheless still human with all of its associated weaknesses and frailties.
Literally: the protagonist has actually died, the body has been eaten by worms and fishes at the bottom of the ocean, and the soul has re-incarnated and emerges as, of all things, a moth who gets stuck inside of a hot car.
"animal" = Literally: moths are animals, literally living things that possess an agency of motion. The protagonist who was born and died is now a moth, literally.
"you are all I need" = Allegorically: I have reduced my material attachments and desires to only seeking and sticking with God
"just want(s) to share your light" = A: the only desire I have is to be in (mystical) union with the Deity/God // L: the line shows how moths always fly towards light/heat sources.
"there are no others" = the person is "sticking" with God because there are no other gods, i.e. there is only one God.
Faust Arp shows a person aging, and at the same time shows a living thing (moth) being reincarnated as an elephant.
Allegorically: Yet further maturing but this time more physical, i.e. aging, now to the point of borderline insanity or senility.
Literally: the moth dies and gets repeatedly reincarnated into various lifeforms ("on again, off again"; the constant thrice repetition of words in the song) finally as an elephant whose head ("from the neck up") gets taxidermied ("stuffed") and mounted on a wall and whose body becomes a consumable product of some kind ("butter"). This completes the literal interpretation narrative. (Worm or fish -> moth -> ? etc. -> elephant)
"wakey wakey, rise and shine" = A: when people get very old, memory is weakened, so all successive days become hyper-repetitive and blur into each other. L: Rebirths over and over again.
"it's on again, off again, on again" = A: people with senility have their mind ("it") go in and out of clarity and confusion. L: being born again, dying again, being born again.
"dead from the neck up" = A: still alive in the body (from the neck down) but the lights have gone out for me now. L: see above literal description about the elephant.
"what you ought to, reasonable and sensible" = A: you are told (or tell yourself) that you're supposed to be reasonable and sensible, but you're not. You're senile or have developed insanity. L: the what you reasonably and sensibly ought to do is the Eastern philosophy (Buddhist) notion of escaping the wheel of samsara (existence) by ceasing birth and death.
"take a bow" = what happens at the end of a performance, symbolizing what I would do at the end of my life i.e. "bow out".
"exactly where do you get off?" = contemplating particularly when it might be when I will die.
==END of PART ONE == Coming up: Part Two with concluding analysis==
Preview:
Reckoner and House Of Cards are respectively about facing death while conceiving and procreating through the act of sexual intercourse (framed in a social context).
These are fairly obvious I think, but if need be I can comment or even post a second time with clear and thorough lyric quote intepretations. Plus I'm getting tired and maybe you guys can fill in these blanks!
Jigsaw Falling Into Place and Videotape are respectively about giving birth to a child, and dying.
Again, fairly obvious but if need be I will certainly elaborate on exactly why I put forth this interpretation. Perhaps at this point if you have bought into this thing you could pick out stuff that I have found, or point out stuff I haven't. One vital example is "when I'm at the pearly gates" = I have died and my spirit is reaching one of the typical symbolic imageries associated with heaven.
