The band’s first experiment in using 5/4 time signature, the title track of Float Along — Fill Your Lungs has a tranquil yet trippy feel unlike anything else on the album. The song’s unique time signature paired with its droning drop-D tuning creates a piece that works both as a callback to ‘60s psychedelic rock but also as a perfect, calm closing number. The experiment paved the way for many more non-standard timings and rhythms, such as again using 5/4 in “The River”, 7/4 in Nonagon Infinity, 9/8 (also Brubeck inspired like “The River”) in Murder of the Universe, and the arrays of polymeters in Polygondwanaland. The lyrics follow someone seeing a certain someone’s face in everyday objects with the choruses exclaiming to take deep breaths, though live versions often deviate from Stu’s original meaning. Since its debut, the song has become a beloved jam within the band’s catalog, with live versions stretching longer and longer.
The inspiration for the song came to Stu almost subliminally. As said during an interview for Songwriters on Process, “I pulled up in my car to the barn and I left my lights on in my car. And my car used to make this — this old Ford that I had at the time — used to make this, like, alarm type sound when you left the lights on. It was like ‘hey, come turn your lights off.’ But it was in 5/4. The alarm itself was in 5/4… It was on for like, hours or something and I think it crept into my brain and it wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that the song I wrote has the exact same rhythm as the car alarm. And it was the first song we wrote that was in not 4/4 or whatever and it fucking blew my mind when I made this, like, connection. I think it was the next time that I accidentally left my lights on and the alarm was going off and I just thought ‘holy shit, that’s that song that we wrote, like, a few days ago.’” In an interview for Levitation, it was mentioned that the song was the album’s closer to balance with “Head On/Pill” as the opener — having two long songs at the album’s front and back. The song would be included on the album of the same name, released September 27th, 2013. Stu later called the track underrated during the band’s Chunky Shrapnel Reddit AMA.
The first reported performance was on 2013-08-21 at Bar Open in Naarm (Melbourne) with the first confirmed performance a day later on 2013-08-22 at the Goodgod Small Club in Eora (Sydney). It originally appeared during full performances of Float Along — Fill Your Lungs. These renditions were capable of passing the ten-minute mark, a feature that would remain in future iterations. Based on available data, the song nearly disappeared completely from 2014 to 2018, making only two known appearances. It would return on the band’s 2019 European tour starting with 2019-09-30 at Rock City in Nottingham. Here the song was a set closer that like previous versions went upwards of ten minutes. While not played in 2020, it was played again in 2021 on 2021-12-20 for “Jams Night” and returned to sets as a common closer throughout 2022 and beyond. As the band fell more and more into jam band territory, the song became longer. These performances reached over fifteen minutes in length and introduced improvised metal jams towards the end of the track, giving the song a distinct flair not heard before. They also began to feature newly improvised lyrics by Stu at each show, including psychedelic hallucinations akin to the original (“I saw you in the paper cup, then I saw you as I filled it up” on 2024-09-09) and references to the venue they’re playing at the time (“I saw you at the greenhouse” on 2023-08-14 and “I saw you in this basketball” on 2024-08-30).