Lyrically Speaking: exploring the gothic core of Stateless track ‘Bloodstream’
Some of our most cherished literary canons traverse gothic lines, presenting love and romance as if they were elementary to survival. What is sneered upon today once presented worlds we simultaneously could find ourselves in but never touch—jagged lines between fact and fiction, reality and fantasy, the cadence of finding a soulmate bleeding through narratives like the thumping beats of the heart itself. Stateless track ‘Bloodstream’ captures this essence more than perhaps any other song ever created.
The connection between this particular song and gothic romance fiction is that it has been used in several television shows, each varying in respective gothic tendencies. It wasn’t created for this purpose, of course; rather, it became more recognised as such after the fact, its dark and immersive atmosphere indulging the impassioned mind with its emotional navigation of the beautiful and the macabre.
Stateless, aside from being one of the more enigmatic groups, are usually branded as electronic rock, but in truth, their sounds seem to encompass everything that categorises boundless music. No song is the same, and yet each delivers a rich sound that creates a distinctive atmosphere. ‘Bloodstream’ is a notable example of their style not just because it defies easy categorisation but because the environment it intricately crafts spotlights the haunting duality of light and dark romanticism.
From the opening notes, ‘Bloodstream’ puts you in an unidentifiable space neither here nor there, the piano’s echoey reverb building an uplifting, immersive yet dark and heady environment. The following bass adds to this gravity, reflecting the oftentimes weightiness of falling in love. “Wake up,” Chris James sings, “Look me in the eyes again”. The urgency in the song’s opening line emits a desperate plea, almost like someone who is teetering on the edge between consciousness and oblivion.
“I need to feel your hands upon my face,” he continues, longing for a deeper connection, one that they shared and enjoyed before, a beckon for a confrontation brimming with hidden desires. The demand for emotional truth is central to its overall gothic feel, James’ confessional stance alongside his broader desire to break through a veil of darkness or exist in intensity with his lover, a signifier of something all-consuming.
This is further amplified by the following line, “Words can be like knives / They can cut you open / And the silence surrounds you and haunts you.” The violent imagery likens descriptors to pain while continuing the statement that the darkest of fears are often confronted in the quiet, echoing spaces of the mind or the world around. The chorus brings this to its pinnacle as he sings, “I think I might’ve inhaled you / I can feel you behind my eyes / You’ve gotten into my bloodstream / I can feel you flowing in me.”
Obsession, possession, and the transcendence of metaphysical boundaries are all quintessential to the gothic genre, and ‘Bloodstream’ plays into this in its chorus by likening romantic fixation to consumption. It’s an overwhelming state, one where love and desire suddenly become darker and more uncontrollable. It’s also slightly claustrophobic yet sensory and insatiable, heightening intrigue and presenting love as a force that can feel like a supernatural connection.
The song’s fantastical element also hinges on its play with mystery and the unknown and how the unseen can feel just as suffocating. This is most reflected in the bridge as James sings, “The spaces in between / Two minds and all the places they have been / The spaces in between / I try to put my finger on it.” By filling the space with ambiguity, it suggests that this relationship exists somewhere intangible, signifying another aspect of the gothic trope—the dichotomy between time and space and how blurring such lines creates a reality distorted by emotion and memory.
The song, more broadly, tackles something else intrinsic to the genre: an awareness of longing and codependency but ignorance of its potential harm. This is someone whose infatuation has clouded their very sense of being to the point where they fail to have any grasp on any type of cognitive function. Ultimately, therefore, such gothic fictions often rely on the interplay between the physical and the visceral, which is present from the moment ‘Bloodstream’ draws you in.
