Songfacts®:

• Albion is an ancient and poetic name for Britain, which was perhaps derived from the white (Latin albus) cliffs in south east England that face France. Neko Case likes to explore history and myth in her music and here she makes some jabs at the way England likes to portray itself as a roaring lion. (In the arms of England there are three lions walking and showing full face).
  
  Last lion of Albion
  They'll use you for centuries to come
  They'll steal your patents for the sun
  And you'll feel extinction
  When you see your face on their money
  
  Case explained Billboard: 'It's about how gross it is that so many nations or organizations find some sort of glory in having made something extinct that made the nation so great. I was in England; I was looking at lions that were on some crests and I was imagining myself or what I would to say to the last lion of Albion. I had a fantasy that all these billionaires would buy Mars or move there, and when they got there, because they were going to colonize it, there would be an army of lions waiting to devour them."
• The song mocks mankind's search to tame nature. Case was inspired by classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor's book The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. The singer told Q magazine she "dug up all this history about the horse warriors Of Asia and the Dahomey warriors of Africa."