Broken Satellites hangs three notes in space and leaves out the one that would spell them. The rhythm guitar sustains F and G and B-flat, the ninth and major third and fifth of E-flat, with no root anywhere. For four bars the cluster just rings, and the E-flat tonic is implied by the note that stays missing. The listener hears the open fifth of B-flat and F with the G coloring the middle.
The voicing stacks the ninth right over the third and fifth, a close cluster that creates the hovering effect the verse will exploit. When the bass enters at bar four on D, not E-flat, and the guitar shifts to a D power chord, the song plants its central trick early. That D will return as the major seventh of E-flat the moment the voice arrives. The pivot is set up ahead of the first sung word.
The verse leaves the third out and puts the motion in the voice. The rhythm guitar rocks B-flat-sus4 to F-sus4, both sus, no third in either, so neither chord states major or minor. Over that bed the vocal steps through the scale, G to A-flat to B-flat to C, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth of E-flat, plain stepwise motion carrying "the human eye can see more shades of green."
The line drops its phrases on the color degrees rather than the root, ending on the fourth, the fifth, the third, the sixth, never settling on the tonic. The sus chords give it room, holding a fourth where a third would decide the mood, so the voice does all the coloring while the floor stays open. The verse states its idea by stepping up the scale over two chords that refuse to commit.
The bridge holds the only real cadence in the song. The rhythm guitar walks C-five to B-flat-five to E-flat-five, which in E-flat major stands as the six chord to the five chord to the one. It is the one place the harmony resolves by function instead of rocking between power-chord roots. The voice sings the major third over the six chord and the fourth over the five chord into the landing.
Everything else in the song avoids this kind of arrival. The verses trade roots with no dominant and the chorus stacks the tonic without moving. The bridge gives the listener the cadence the rest of the song never plays, a single clean five to one. Then it hands back to the power-chord world and the resolution does not come again.
The pre-chorus opens on the boldest dissonance on the record. The rhythm guitar holds an E-flat power chord with an A-natural on top, the sharp-four, the tritone of E-flat. That A is the most foreign tone to E-flat major, and the band lets it ring for four full bars under the line about not waking someone. The chord refuses to soften the rub.
Then the harmony walks a fast ladder down. The guitar steps G-five to A-flat-five, holds C-five for two bars as the brightest moment, then drops B-flat-five to A-five and sustains the A. Six chords move in six bars, the longest stretch of real chord motion in the song. The ladder settles on an E-flat-major-nine with no third, where the chorus begins and the held vocal D returns.
After a minute of leaning on the dominant, E-flat major finally arrives as the long-delayed tonic, the home chord the song withheld. The rhythm guitar states it plainly, E-flat and G and B-flat, the major third G sitting on top for the first clear time. The home key lands.
Then it turns to its own shadow. The guitar drops the G to G-flat on the same E-flat root, flipping the chord to E-flat minor, the parallel minor, the major third darkened to the flat third with everything else held. The voice tracks the flip, singing the major third G over the major chord and the flat third G-flat over the minor. The song reaches home and immediately shades it, the tonic and its darker twin sounded back to back on one root.
The outro parks on D major, the flat-seven of E-flat, a chord a half step under the home it never lands. The rhythm guitar holds D and F-sharp and A while the bass plants a low D, and the song simply stays there. After living its whole length on a B-flat surface above an E-flat center, the close settles onto the chord one half step below home and refuses to take the last step up.
Nothing resolves. There is no final E-flat, no cadence, only the flat-seven held until the fade. The song spent its opening leaning on a dominant it would not resolve and ends leaning on a flat-seven it will not resolve either, bookending the whole track with a home kept just out of reach. The satellite never quite settles, the ending suspended rather than landed.