“This one sounds almost like a joke, and I left it that way on purpose. I'd say it really shaped the sound of the album. It came from wanting something with that timeless quality of Torn by Natalie Imbruglia, with a little of Pure Shores by All Saints. Nostalgic, soothing, a kind of comfort. I thought I'd find that comfort in a song about comfort. Panic, though, lives much more in the calm you show other people than in the hysteria everyone pictures when someone falls apart.

Almost is about being fully ready, standing right at the door, the car waiting outside, and not being able to leave. That's my agoraphobia. It arrives quietly and stops your hand on the handle without warning. The song found its place, its whole mood, on the day of an agoraphobic panic attack. That was when I really started to feel the impact of everything, what the tide leaves behind when it pulls back. You try to go out, to do the most obvious, basic thing, and you realize you're no longer that person. This time the reason is plain: you're depressed, and you're scared to leave the house.

That day I even ordered the car. I was just starting to have those fears and I thought: I'm stronger than this. I sent my friend a thumbs up, I read every review of the bar, I laid the dress on the bed like proof. I made it as far as stepping outside. In that state it feels like everyone is looking at you, so I played with that: everyone noticing how wonderful I looked. Then my legs took a vote and outvoted me. I went back inside and had to take off my full face of brave, makeup and all.

I've always had this habit, a little self-destructive and somehow useful too, of making light of the things that hurt me most. Sometimes I do it with other people's pain as well, and by the time I notice, it's already out of my mouth. That's why it's written light. From the inside it feels almost funny, almost sad, always almost. People hear agoraphobia and think the street is the monster. For me the worse thought was the one in the bridge: what if I do all of this, get dressed, pay for the car, smile at everybody, and come home feeling exactly the same? I like the word almost because it's pathetic and hopeful at the same time. Some nights almost really is the whole achievement.

Isolation rarely arrives overnight. The overnight part is the moment you realize you're already there and can't go on. The last chorus leaves the TV on like a promise to no one, in case the one I used to be heads home, which is the grief for a former self that runs through this whole side. The good shoes go back in the box, still new, the same shoes from Ride Back Home. And tomorrow I swear I'll be someone who left. That tomorrow keeps getting postponed until Fine China, on the other side of the record, where it starts to sound like a threat.

Listen without paying attention and it's a pleasant late-afternoon song. It's my desperate way of dealing with fear and trauma: joking about something very serious. I can't name a favorite on this record anymore, and still, this is the song that sums up what this record is to me.

Trivia: Paper Hands was cut from the album at the last minute because it lived too close to this one. It's the moment the narrator of Almost finally gets out, and it's coming out now as a bonus.”