Waiting for an Alibi

Few songs capture the elastic, held-breath tension of waiting quite like this one. The intro guitar figure coils and uncoils with a restless energy that never resolves — it teases forward motion without committing to it, which is exactly the emotional state the song is mapping. When the full band drops in, there's a groove to it, a mid-tempo swing that makes the song feel like circling rather than charging. Lynott's voice here is more intimate than combative, threading vulnerability through a narrative about evasion and complicity — someone waiting for a story to hold together, for events to arrange themselves into something they can live with. The dual guitar interplay is particularly articulate in the verses, trading small fills that feel like anxious thoughts interrupting each other. By the time the chorus arrives it hits with genuine release, not because the tension is resolved but because it's acknowledged. The song sits comfortably in the late-seventies hard rock world while retaining something distinctly literary about its construction — Lynott always wrote from a storyteller's instinct, and here the structure of the song enacts the story rather than simply describing it. This is music for long drives at night when you're rehearsing what you're going to say.