The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us!

The Palisades are the bluffs of the Mississippi near Savanna, Illinois; Stevens said one song referred to a camping trip there, though he had never been. The memory behind it comes from a childhood summer camp in Michigan, transplanted to Illinois, and the song is about two boys, read either as friendship or as romance. Writers have quoted Stevens as saying some of his most profound spiritual and sexual experiences happened at a summer camp, and Jezebel called it as close to explicitly gay as he had come. It builds through choir and Craig Montoro's trumpet to the line I can't explain the state I'm in, which Paste noted lands ironically after an album of state landmarks.

It was a frequent encore on the Illinois and Carrie & Lowell tours. In Illinoise it scores a character's guilt over leaving his first love.