For being one of his least regarded albums, Four Pails is one of the takeaways of Hammill's Skin. Less surprising it is then that the song has been performed live by him on occasion to this day. Like many of his songs, leading back to the first VdGG single People You Were Going To, Hammill did not in fact write the song. It was instead written by VdGG's co-founder Judge Smith and his friend Max Hutchinson. Given Hutchinson worked with Smith before VdGG had even formed, this song for all we know could date back to the 1960s. This is also reasonable given the studio resurrection of Sci-Finance, featured on VdGG's Vital in 1978, on Hammill's next album after ten years. While many of Hammill's covers of Judge Smith are darkly humorous, such as People You Were Going To and Institute Of Mental Health Burning, Four Pails goes even deeper, being one of Hammill's most confrontational of existentialism.
The first part of the song directly defines atheistic ideology, virtually the belief that there is no afterlife and that life is purely the result of natural processes. "It's a sad philosophy, but better sad than wrong." The second part though expands and provides a counterpoint via the theme of lost love, a concept identifiable with Hammill throughout his career. For how strongly the narrator states the beliefs at first, he finds himself in question due to this relationship and the hope and possibility of a reconciliation beyond life. "Once I would have answered clearly, now I only think I'm nearly sure" ends the song with the reconciliation of these two aspects yet unfulfilled.
The hardly origin production that defines Skin is still present here with overdubbed backing vocals, if with a lesser degree and especially compared with In A Foreign Town. They are still put into haunting use, particularly with the thematic conclusion of the first part "Face the truth instead; when you're dead you're dead; when you're gone, you're gone." I could also think of the song as an alteration of the structure of People You Were Going To, going from a metaphor of infidelity with misfortune, as an inability to reconcile lost love with atheism, which may better indicate the song's origins.