This Bleak, Forever

I don’t miss my friends—I miss a time and a place.

You’re not haunted—you just miss everything.

I present to you a contradiction. However, within this contraction, both of these things can exist—they can both be true.

And I realize that it is, in fact, true. Or there is an understanding. You can think that you miss people—friends you have fallen out of touch with. Characters in stories you no longer tell as often as you maybe once did. And maybe you do miss them. These individuals. But, I think, more than anything—more than missing those people, specifically, what I have come to understand is that you miss the idea of them. What you really miss is the time, and the place, they are representative of. 

We romanticize our pasts. Lives we lived before the one we have found ourselves in today. When we were younger, yes. And because there is an implication of youth. Or, an age removed, however far, from the age we are now. And in that implication, and that removal, however far, we recognize we had fewer responsibilities. Less weighing us down, both figurative and literal, in our day-to-day. 

I miss a time, and a place. A feeling. I think about the line, as cloying as it is, from The Perks of Being A Wallflower. In the scene where the novel’s protagonist is standing up in the bed of a pick-up truck, speeding through a tunnel, listening to “Landslide,” and he says, “In that moment, I swear we were infinite.” It is a feeling. Indicative of a time, and a place. The people there, in those moments, you think you miss them, and maybe you do. But it is truly the moment itself that you long for. 

It is not something you are trying, or even able, to return to. It has, with all certainty, passed. 

But it is something you think of. Maybe more often than you realize—the infinite feeling. Formative. Regardless of the implication of youth, or age removed. There’s a bittersweetness. And even in understanding that feeling exists, or hangs over this memory—it does not prevent you from revisiting. Your fingers, gently caressing the window to this past you have romanticized. When things were good until they were not. 

When we felt infinite. Until there was an ending. 

*

People will never tire of being told to look at The Sad Thing

I present to you another contradiction. 

It is very easy for many, including myself, to fix your gaze upon The Sad Thing. And in that, to be offered the opportunity to wallow. Or, as I am often doing, catching unflattering glimpses of myself in the reflection it casts. It is, I think, a safe space. There is a comfort. To indulge, or to surrender to something. The Sad Thing, however much time we spend with it, does not ask much of us as participants.

What if a Sad Thing challenges us, though. Or asks something of us—for us to give consideration to what, if anything, is beyond. Sorrow often feels like it is simply unending. That we will never see over the horizon, or sprint far enough ahead of what we are trying to outrun. It seems a little out of place to use the word “thrives” within this context, but a Sad Thing regularly, I think, thrives in this environment. An endless sorrow that we are unable to look beyond. 

What if, though. What if a Sad Thing presents us with a contradiction. Or a contrast. What if it not only asks something of us, as participants. But, out of a kind of seething desperation, makes a  demand. 

What if A Sad Thing asks us to consider, even for a moment, that within what we indulge, or surrender to, there is also hope. And it isn’t always easy to find. That’s the thing. The challenge presented. We have to look. And we have to want. There is little, if any, effort in surrendering or indulging into the comfort of a sadness. And I do not fault you, as I try not to fault myself, for those indulgences and for that surrender and the amount of time we may spend within that space, because it is what we know and perhaps know well.

But there is the ask. The demand. The contradiction. These moments—often fleeting. Sometimes small. We clutch onto them as tightly as we can, and wonder if it is these small, fleeting things that could propel us over the horizon of the sorrow we have been unable to see beyond.

*

I am always thinking about how an album lives. And the idea of the “life of an album.” Because I would contend they are two different things. And I am much more concerned, or invested, in one of these things, over the other.

The “life of an album,” or the life of anything, really, is an unfortunate byproduct of the intersection of art and industry, or commodity. An album is recorded. A book is written. A film is directed. These things are then released into the world. There is the expectation, or desire, or whatever, to promote, or share. To generate excitement. For an audience to sit down and watch the movie or to turn the pages or to listen. 

W/r/t an album, the artist—the band, the singer, whoever. There is the implication that they will go on tour in support of the album they have worked to bring into the world. Singles will be released. Videos will be filmed and put online. The excitement, or interest, generated. And there is the point, then, when more is asked. The implication that the excitement be sustained. The interest renewed somehow. “Deluxe” editions of albums reissued a few months, or a year later, with a handful of additional songs and a different cover photo on the sleeve. Another tour launched. Whatever. All of this extends the life beyond what was perhaps originally intended.

Before it begins again. The cyclical nature of it all. 

I am more fascinated with, or genuinely interested in the idea of how an album lives.

Because it is brought into the world, yes. It perhaps finds an audience upon release. But what compels me is how that album connects with its audience, or its listeners. Not only the how, but also the why. What is it about the album. How, and why, is it something that we can find fragments of ourselves within. Why is it so affecting or resonant or poignant. Why is it something that, if we are able, we carry with us through time. How does an album grow along with us. Why is it something we return to—a year, or even a decade later, as a source of comfort and solace.

Why have we extended its life through allowing it to live in this way.

And I do contend that they are two different things—the life of an album, and how an album lives. And it does not happen often, but there is a place where those things overlap slightly, or run concurrently with one another. Because I would contend that, in arriving two years later, A Brief Intermission in The Flattening of Time, at least in how it is presented physically on vinyl, serves as an extension to an album’s life, and an expansion to how an album lives. 

Spanish Love Song’s fourth full-length, No Joy, originally released in the summer of 2023, has had a life. It has, also, continued to live. Brief Intermission is not a companion piece, exactly, but rather, it presents a continuation I think—collecting the Doom And Gloom covers EP, the primarily acoustic, or at least inward turned and somber No Joy Sessions, alongside four newly recorded songs. And something that is admirable is how this collection handles itself in a meticulously thoughtful way. 

Because it does, at least at first glance, appear like these 13 songs, pulled from three separate releases, do not entirely belong together. But, there is the life extended. The expansion and the continuation. And what Brief Intermission in The Flattening of Time offers us, as listeners, is the opportunity to be reflective in the space created by this kind of an intersection—specifically, the chance to recognize, more than anything, the recurring themes, or ideas, rippling throughout, and how that propels us towards in an understanding of the human condition and of ourselves.

*

I present to you another contradiction. 

Or, if anything, a contrast. A dichotomy. The Sad Thing. Or, rather, A Sad Thing, and how it is complicated when it does ask more of us. Or wants us to give consideration to something other than the primary emotion.

There is a device, or technique, in songwriting, that I always marvel at. It is a kind of legerdemain—a precise or meticulous distraction. You explore something sad, or dark, or bleak—whatever, in your lyricism, and rather than surrendering to that tone, or feeling, in how the song ultimately sounds—the arranging, the instruments used, the pacing—you play against it. You build it around an infectious chorus—one so dazzling and voluminous that the gravity of the lyrics, and what they wish to convey, might not hit you immediately. You assemble it around a kind of tension and release, and within that, there is a propulsion. A jubilance. Something triumphant, at times, in how it swells. Anthemic. The contrast created. The contradiction. A complication. You are asked to consider the primary emotion of sorrow, but it is presented in such a way that isn’t difficult, exactly, but you are asked to acknowledge, or understand, is that there is something more. 

Sometimes, I think about the idea of refusal. The small acts of it in our lives. Of course living, itself, is an act of refusal. 

Said you thought I was a lifer, too

And there is a self-referential, or self-aware nature to Spanish Love Songs. There are, of course, these much larger, recurring themes or ideas, feelings, and even imagery, that are often present in Dylan Slocum’s songwriting. But something that the band does, and I think they do this very well, and do it with a quiet kind of intelligence, or sharpness, is that they create this slight insular feeling within the world of the album. This is not to say that you are unable to, or should not attempt to extract songs, and listen to them, or enjoy them outside of the context of the whole. 

There simply is this connective thread.

This is the most apparent, even with a casual glance, on their 2020 album Brave Faces Everyone, with the songs “Losers,” and “Losers 2,” and again with “Self-Destruction (As a Sensible Career Choice,)” and “Optimism (As a Radical Life Choice.).” And there is not as outwardly, or as direct a connection within the album No Joy, and this is why A Brief Intermission serves as an expansion, or continuation, because it offers us a connective thread.

“Lifers Too” offers connection in name, yes, but also in specific ideas, or motifs, even, to “Lifers,” the swelling, anthemic opening track to No Joy. Here, “Lifers Too” appears in two forms—the first, placed at the top of the collection, is amongst the newly recorded tracks, and features Dan Campbell from The Wonder Years on guest vocals; it appears again on the second side, in a much sparser and somberly arranged form, as part of the five songs from the No Joy Sessions recordings. 

You thought I was a lifer—I never thought I’d get this old

And there is this device, or technique, in songwriting, that I always marvel at—this legerdemain. A distraction executed with precision. When the artist knows exactly what they’re doing, and is perhaps even impressed with themselves at how it comes together. There is the exploration, in the lyricism, of something sad, or dark, or bleak. Whatever. And rather than surrender completely to that tone or that feeling, in how things sound—the instrumentation, their progressions, the tempo, you play against it completely. 

Spanish Love Songs, on paper, make songs that are sad, yes. It is an easy ask for us to fix our gaze upon The Sad Thing. But they, more than anything, are also unflinching in their honesty about not only sadness, as a feeling, but where it comes from, or why we are experiencing it. 

That it can come from a place of fear, or desperation. A place of exhaustion. 

You play against it though. You make something dazzling and voluminous. Something jubilant-sounding. Something triumphant and propulsive. Something with a theatrical flair. Something that swells and pushes itself with ease into a kind of anthem where you want to both lose yourself within the sorrow that you feel, but also the complication of that, and that there is this hope, or a kind of optimism, that it isn’t always going to feel like this. 

This conversion of sorrow, or sadness, or despair, and the hope that we are so desperately clinging to, is always depicted vividly in Slocum’s writing. It is arresting, sometimes, his phrase turns the narrative, both personal and accessible, or something understandable to us, as listeners, depicted through hyper-specific vignettes, or moments. But more than that, is the feeling. A feeling. And how it lingers. And why. 

The connective nature between “Lifers” and “Lifers Too” is more than just self-referential titles, and a similar use of the word itself within the lyrics. It is really within the themes presented. There isn’t an unrest, exactly, that Slocum often details in his songwriting, but an uncertainty, or an unease. A dissatisfaction both with yourself, and the world, and in that intersection, being at a loss, or in feeling just too overwhelmed by the weight of it all, to have any idea of what to do, or how to claw your way out. 

There is a desperation, and a sorrow. The understanding that we are all barely hanging on. And in that understanding though, there is the complication introduced. That we do, in fact, have to hang on. Because there are the faintest glimmers of hope. There are the acts of refusal.

“Lifers,” while not represented on A Brief Intermission, is resonant and poignant from nearly the moment it begins, and how it arrives at an anthemic, triumphant-sounding chorus that is still firmly rooted in the exploration and the complication of The Sad Thing. “And you’re not sure why but when you leave the house, you circle the block to cry,” Slocum howls before the song is punctuated with a slight ascension. “Do you think that we’ll outrun it—get past the pain of simply being,” he asks. “Every time you want out of your body, or can’t get your head around this dream. You swore you loved it more when you couldn’t guess the end. It’s never adding up, but don’t write yourself out of the equation.”

In arranging, and in tone, “Lifers Too” is similar to its predecessor, as well as a bulk of the sound, or the more robust aesthetic Spanish Love Songs were exploring on No Joy—fewer of the sharper edges that you could hear on Brave Faces Everyone, and more interesting, or organic ways to include textures from Meredith Van Woert’s synthesizers.

“Lifers Too” opens with the ripple and quiver of keyboards—frenetic, pulsating textures that gradually fold into one another, creating a loose rhythm and tempo for the crisp sounds of the snare drum and hi-hat cymbal to arrive, the jaunty bass line, and the melodies strummed out through dueling electric guitar lines. The song shimmers, and the band quickly guides it into that place of a subtle tension and release. With the verses skittering on the surface that seems like it is just on the cusp of becoming explosive, and the choruses arriving with just the right amount of excitement, and enthusiasm—less of an infectiousness, and more about a momentum of sorts. An extremely powerful feeling that is very easy to get swept up in, or captivated by. And for as towering heights as Spanish Love Songs are capable of climbing, there is this restraint, or subdued nature that is cast over “Lifers Too,” as well as the three other newer songs included on Brief Intermission. 

The second version of “Lifers Too” that is included within the collection is not an inverse, exactly, but it is much more introspective in how it sounds, as well as how it unfolds. There is a kind indie folk adjacency to the dextrous way the acoustic guitar sings are plucked—a little slower in pacing, and much more reserved comparatively to its counterpart, the No Joy Sessions recording of “Lifers Too” is, as you might anticipate, less triumphant or exuberant in how it feels, but it surprisingly finds its way into head nodding kind of groove. It isn’t rollicking, by any means, but there is a bounce, still, to be found, even in this skeletal arrangement, and rather than hinging itself on a kind of tension and release, it effortlessly sustains this kind of slow burn, as more elements find their place within, culminating with the hushed inclusion of the percussion, which pulls everything together gently.

In both songs, but specifically in “Lifer Too,” the notion of being a “lifer,” is presented as neither a bad, nor a good thing. It is, perhaps, something you wish to escape, but are unable to. Fated in a way. To a discomfort, but there is a familiarity in it, because it is what you have known for so long.

And there is a want that surges throughout Slocum’s writing—not a want for something bigger or better, or even more, really. But for something else. For things to feel different. Less dire. The Sad Thing is complicated by the notion that there is hope. Or that there is something good, and that, as impossible as it may appear at times, and sometimes it does feel impossible in a way that I am unable to put into words, we are asked to hold on for just a little bit longer. 

These acts of refusal in our lives. Living, itself, being an act of refusal. The flimsy relationship we might have with mortality. “You thought I was a lifer,” Slocum exclaims in the chorus, before adding, as an aside. “I never thought I’d get this old.”

*

People will never tire of being told to look at The Sad Thing

It is very easy for many, myself included, to regularly fix our gaze upon The Sad Thing. It offers the opportunity to wallow. Or, if you are like me, to catch the most unflattering glimpses of yourself in the reflection it casts. The sadness becomes a safe space. There’s comfort in indulging, or surrendering. The Sad Thing does not ask much, if anything, of us as participants.

As a “Sad Thing,” Spanish Love Songs, and really No Joy, as a whole, subverts that idea. The Sad Thing challenges us, and wants us to give consideration to what is beyond the unending sense of sorrow that we are so often overcome with. It wants us to know that within what we indulge, or surrender to, there is also hope. That is not easy to find. But the challenge presented is to look for it, and to want it, and to acknowledge that even when it does feel like it, this isn’t it. There are small good things. Moments. Often fleeting. And we are trying to clutch onto them as tightly as we are able.

And for as much as No Joy complicates this idea of The Sad Thing by juxtaposing these often enormous, anthemic sounding songs with lyrics written the space that exists in the intersection of hope and despair, the material included from the No Joy Sessions, sequenced as a sprawling centerpiece on A Brief Intermission, forego the enormity, or the rollicking jubilance, and are moments when the band does surrender and indulge in the sorrow.

I stop short of referring to these five songs as “acoustic versions,” because that isn’t an entirely accurate description. They are, if anything, skeletal reinterpretations—sparsely arranged around, yes, the strum of the acoustic guitar, but there are more elements at work, like dreamy layers of synthesizers or heavily effected textures and atmospheric tones from the electric guitar. It creates a kind of intimacy—an invitation and a warmth, even with as sorrowful, and as somber as it ultimately is. But it is compelling—fascinating, really, because the band doesn’t so much rebuild their own songs as they simply pull away enough of the bold, bombastic trappings to reveal what is at their core. The compulsion, and the fascination, then, is in how Spanish Love Songs leans further into The Sad Thing, and a kind of self-aware, winking theatricality, within both the arrangements, and in how Slocum’s vocals are delivered and often hang like a specter. 

And in how hard the gravity of his lyricism hits you when there is little to disguise it. 

The ideas of grief and loss play large roles in a lot of Dylan Slocum’s songwriting—the kind of themes for which there is often no resolution in the end. But rather, they are feelings that continue to present themselves through specific portraits, or fragments, that are portrayed in the narratives, and in phrasings that linger, and haunt. 

“There’s an oil field on fire,” he begins—a startling opening line, as the hollow, downcast strums of the acoustic guitar fall in behind him on the harrowing “Here You Are.” “I’m freezing in my bed down in Austin. I try to power up my phone like I’m conjuring a ghost to get your voice back in my head.”

“I want to know what you’d make of it—you left two years before this stopped making sense,” he continues, in a line that is both personal, and vague, and surprising in how evocative it can be. “You told me to hold on—that my time was coming. We wrapped you in plastic.”

There is this well-balanced give and take—less of a tension and release and more of just understanding of when to make a tonal shift, that Spanish Love Songs strikes within the arrangement of “Here You Are.” The verses plod forward with this very intentional heaviness, which then lifts, slightly, and briefly, when the song arrives at the chorus, thanks specifically to both the way the vocal melody, even in the anguish depicted, ascends, and through the accompaniment of an accordion—offering a kind of softening to the melancholy, similar to the tone, or feeling, that a song like, of all things,  “A Long December” has. 

The chorus, when it does arrive, offers the same sentiments, in the end. But Slocum chooses specific words differently each time, as a means of conveying, and connecting back to the verse that has preceded. “I’ll go out like a spark,” he exclaims. “With my trauma and me,” which he later changes to “Go out like a spark—put your trauma on me.” 

“Lie down in the dark—tell me it won’t hurt when it comes.”

There is a snarl that is kept just below the surface as “Here You Are” picks up in its second verse, with the introduction of the drum kit, and the low, somewhat ominous tones of both a keyboard, and the electric guitar, as Slocum continues to reflect, with his observations growing both more personal, with a seething kind of darkness, or frustration, the further along we are taken. “Dig me up in another two years, there might be someone then who cares,” he scoffs in the bridge. “I never got this carried away with anything, but I didn’t feel like I was dying all the time. I only feel safe before I wake.”

I am always thinking about the life of an album, and about how an album lives. And about how, yes, there is some overlap there, but that they are two different things. And with how an album lives, the songs included within also continue to live, and can offer opportunities to grow. And in the sense that A Brief Intermission is a continuation, and an expansion, it offers a glimpse into the way the band, and the songs, have evolved. 

There is a self-referential, and self-aware nature to Spanish Love Songs. Of course there are the much larger, recurring themes, or ideas or feelings, or imagery, that are often present. But throughout both Brave Faces Everyone, and No Joy, Slocum does write, and reflect, on his role as a member of the band, and all of the things that do come along with that—frustration being one of the experiences that is the most prevalent. And what it means to succeed. What it means to fail. Where do those intersect or converge.

“Here You Are,” in its original iteration, is much shorter, and much faster in its tempo—with two additional verses, the song’s unnerving second verse, here, in this Sessions recording, has been bumped further in, arriving near the end, before an even more unnerving afterward is uttered. “There’s a kid with a trust fund asking me why I’m not famous,” Slocum laments. “I wonder if I take his fucking skin, if I can stay in my apartment.”

“Move to a town named for a racist,” he continues, as the instrumentation has dropped out behind him, save for the hollow, downcast strums of his acoustic guitar. “I watch my friends—we all drop like cicadas. I’m on the edge of oblivion. Just gonna dip my head in—sit back, and drink myself to death.”

Fuck the garden and the yard. I can barely tend to my own dreams.

I am remiss to describe the material from the No Joy Sessions as “acoustic versions,” simply because that is not an entirely accurate description. They are, really, skeletal reinterpretations. They are sparsely, or sparingly, arranged around an acoustic guitar strum, yes, but there are a lot more elements working here, like textural, atmospheric guitar lines, and dreamy layers of synthesizers, weaving together to create something that is both gentler, and perhaps a little more organic-sounding, while remaining just a little hazy or otherworldly. 

Spanish Love Songs doesn’t feel the need to rebuild their own songs here. They just pull away enough of the bombastic, bold trappings, as a means of revealing what was always at the core. It often, like in “Here You Are,” and also on “Clean Up Crew,” leans further into The Sad Thing, rather than playing against it with the towering, rollicking arrangements the original version of these songs has. And like the absolutely chilling way that “Here You Are” opens, and closes, with Slocum’s voice rising and falling with restraint against the downcast guitar progressions, the version of “Clean Up Crew” featured here really does surrender, immediately, to this kind of self-aware drama—stirring within the mournful notes plunked out on a cavernous sounding piano, before the other instruments, including a wonky synthesizer and understated percussion, come in to lighten things. 

“Clean Up Crew” is one of the most exuberant, boisterous songs on No Joy—cleverly anthemic as a means of obscuring what is detailed in its narrative. It, like “Here You Are,” seethes from a space of frustration, and exhaustion, teeters on the edge of that intersection of hope and despair. Of wondering if this is all there is. Or if things are ever going to feel good again. And if there is more, and if things will feel different, understanding or at least acknowledging it feels impossible to see beyond the depth of the moment you are currently in.

And there is a lot of stark imagery throughout “Clean Up Crew”—the opening line alone is incredibly vivid in not only what it depicts, but also a specific feeling. “I drove across Nebraska for the fourth time in a year—the sky looked like a cracked phone screen.”

And something that Slocum explores throughout No Joy, and in turn, the songs from the No Joy Sessions on A Brief Intermission is loss. Literal, I think, and figurative. And it is done so, or woven into the writing, in such a way that it is as revealing as it needs to be. Just enough, or just as much as he is willing to share in this moment, delivered in a way where you understand the importance, or the gravity, but protected by an ambiguous, poetic haze.

“I’m seeing you in dreams—you’re happy and healthy,” he explains in the bridge to “Clean Up Crew.” “Eager to talk after my surprise wedding. Push back the dirt in Tennessee, you ask me, ‘Is this where you want to be.’”

It is again that questioning. What is success. What is failure. Who dictates that. Why do we keep pushing ourselves well beyond the point of frustration and exhaustion that seems to have settled deep into our bones? 

“Fuck the garden and the yard,” Slocum muses in the chorus. “We can barely tend to our own dreams.” And, here, like he does on “Here You Are,” he alters the phrase turns to punctuate specific, thought similar, experiences. “Maybe a big life isn’t ours,” he says, before softening it to “Maybe a big life isn’t meant for us.”

“We’ll settle down on a quiet street and hope we don’t give in,” again, is softer than the line used near the end of the song. “Shot dead, in the middle of the street.”

The complication of The Sad Thing, or A Sad Thing, is not unsustainable, but it can falter. You surrender, and indulge in sorrow. And the chorus to “Clean Up Crew” is one of the moments where we do understand how difficult it can be to maintain the acts of refusal, or to continue casting your gaze further out, in search of something small and good. “You had me there for a second—I started to believe that we could make it,” Slocum concedes. “It’s just like life to come teach me a lesson. Every time, I swear I forget it.”

*

I don’t miss my friends. I miss a time and a place.

Admittedly, at first glance, the physical version of A Brief Intermission seems like it is potentially trying to collect too many things that have little, if anything, in connection with one another. The first side opens with four new songs, all of which feature a guest vocalist; the first side concludes, and the second begins with the sparse, somber reinterpretations of songs from No Joy—and the second side, then, ends with the Doom and Gloom Sessions, four covers originally released in the spring of 2023.

Three of the four songs from the Doom and Gloom EP are from the year 2004.

I miss a time and a place.

You can think you miss people. The friends you have fallen out of touch with and the characters from stories you no longer tell as often as you maybe once did. And yes, maybe you do miss them. These individuals. But, I think more than anything, what I have come to understand is that you miss the idea of them. And you miss the time and the place that they are representative of. 

Because we romanticize our pasts. The lives that we lived before the one that we have found ourselves in now. The time when we were younger, yes, and because there is this implication of youth. Or an age removed, however far from the age we are today. In that implication, and that removal, however far from now, we recognize there was a time and a place where we had fewer responsibilities. There was less weighing us down. Both figuratively and literally. 

A time. A place. A Feeling. It’s not something that you are trying or even able to return to. It has with all certainty passed, but it is something you think of regardless. Maybe more than you realize. This formative time. There is a bittersweetness and knowing that exists, or hangs over the memory, does not prevent you from revisiting. Your fingers, gently caressing the window to this past you have romanticized. The time. The place. A feeling. When things were good until they were no longer. 

I miss a time and a place and three of the four songs included on the Doom and Gloom Ep are originally from the year 2004—my final year of college. A time. A place. A feeling. Beautiful. Tumultuous. The summer of 2004 until the spring of the following year. I was 21. It’s not something that I am trying to return to, certainly. I, of course, cannot. This past I have romanticized. This formative time. The implication of youth. Fewer responsibilities. Characters in stories that I no longer tell as often as I maybe once did if I tell them at all. 

I swear we were infinite. Until there was an ending.

In the sequencing of A Brief Intermission, with the covers from the Doom and Gloom Sessions placed near the end, they arrive as a kind of final, exuberant, exhaustive gasp—the energy is high, and the band, in these recordings, are not afraid to push this breakneck, ramshackle exuberance into a place where it feels like it is simply going to burst. 

The Killers allege they wrote “Smile Like You Mean It,” the moody, icy third track from their debut album, Hot Fuss, in eight minutes. And regardless of how you felt about The Killers in the summer of 2004, when the album was released, or regardless of how you feel about them now, if you feel anything, two decades removed—there is a captivation. The nervy seduction of “Somebody Told Me.” The Strokes pastiche cuckolding of “Mr. Brightside,” which has strangely gone onto become the kind of anthemic pop song regularly played at sporting events. The intentional theatricality and smolder of “All These Things That I Have Done”—the cathartic moment arriving in the line, “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier,” which does not have the depth you at one time gave it credit for having. 

Hot Fuss has an impeccable five-song run, right from the moment it begins. And “Smile Like You Mean It” serves as a reprieve of sorts, in tone, from the blistering bombast of “Mr. Brightside.” “Smile” is not a menacing song, but an ominous one, as many of Killers songs are—playing into a self-awareness and camp with the dramatic flair of Brandon Flowers, and the heavy, often antiquated sounds of the synthesizers. They allege they wrote it in eight minutes. I am not a songwriter. I do not play an instrument. My voice can not carry a tune. I cannot read music. I am unaware of how long it may, or may not take, to write a song. Or write a song that hinges itself so easily onto an enormous, infectious chorus. This is not to be dismissive, but even in dissecting it slightly, you can see how “Smile Like You Mean It” was apparently written in such a short amount of time—it isn’t thoughtless, but it is not thoughtful. The phrasing is extremely vague—which is fine. It is the kind of song that knows how to mash together things that sound interesting or even poignant if you don’t linger, before ushering you into the ascension of the chorus, which is just the titular phrase, repeated. 

The idea of the cover song is both challenging, and not. It is only as challenging, I think, as you wish to make it. 

There are of course the cover songs that successfully reinterpret the original—and this is not to say that they always need to be transcendent in such a way that they eclipse. I am thinking of Johnny Cash’s haunting, and borderline exploitive, take on Nine Inch Nails’ “Hurt.” I am thinking of Jeff Buckley’s sprawling, restless adaptation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” There is a space that exists where you show homage to the original, while adding something of your own to it—something to make it memorable enough. 

The idea of the cover is both challenging, and not. Often, a cover can be miscast. The lens through which it has been interpreted can simply not work, or not land in the way the artist perhaps wished it to.

You can hear both the earnestness, or seriousness, in the Spanish Love Songs cover of “Smile Like You Mean It,” but in the kind of jittery enthusiasm of the snarling nature of how it sounds, and in how Slocum delivers the vocals, you understand that the band is having fun with it—and wishes for you to have fun as well, as you listen. The idea of the cover is both challenging and not—this is not miscast, by any means, but it is also straightforward enough in its arranging that exists just outside of the space where an homage intersects with something original. 

And there is a kind of eeriness, or unsettling nature, to the song. However campy or theatrical the original might be. The synthesizer melody that surges through of course shimmers with a bright reflection of the 1980s New Wave aesthetic, but there is also something chilling in not how it sounds, but rather, how it feels. Just a creeping, icy feeling that swells—the lyrics within the bridge also lend themselves to this sensation. “Someone is calling my name from the back of a restaurant. And someone is playing a game in the house that I grew up in. And someone will drive her around, down the same streets that I did.”

Within the cover, Spanish Love Songs play into this kind of murky, shadowy feeling—it opens with the muted plunks, and chugs of guitar strings, cascading and layering itself through a thick delay pedal—while the synthesizer melody gathers itself, a little muffled, and slightly mysterious at first, before it becomes much clearer, soaring through the torrent of rhythm guitar, and crisp, brash drumming, and quickly becoming anthemic, especially as the chorus arrives. 

The band does play around, a little, with some tension and release—slowing things down within the bridge, with Slocum’s vocals effected, slightly, by a metallic reverberation, as a wink to the way Brandon Flowers’ voice is robotically distorted as a means of dramatic punctuation in the original. The release, then, comes within intensity which the expression “Smile like you mean it,” is howled—less of a demand, more of a desperate plea, as the song skitters towards its final breath.

The desperation then, is what drives the group’s cover of Rilo Kiley’s “Portions for Foxes.” 

Similar to “Smile Like You Mean It,” “Portions for Foxes” was released in the summer of 2004—taken from Rilo Kiley’s penultimate album, More Adventurous, and their first for a major label, the song is arguably their most widely known. It isn’t a love song, but I would contend it is a song about love. Specifically, the distance that forms between people who are no longer in love, and the space that exists between love and sex. It is a sad song—not in how it sounds, in the slightest. It shimmers, soars, and writhes with a frustration and restlessness, but lyrically, there is this awful, inescapable sorrow and conflict depicted as Rilo Kiley’s principal vocalist, Jenny Lewis, coos and thrashes in that space, and distance, reflecting in an often self-deprecating way.

The original version of “Portions for Foxes” is not a restrained or subdued song its arranging, but this cover does push it into a place where it feels more and more like it is just on the verge of collapsing, moving at just a little bit of a quicker tempo, and playing into a kind of jittery, nervy sensation—a breathless desperation in Slocum’s voice, often arriving with an anxious quiver.

The idea of the cover is both challenging and not. “Portions for Foxes” is by no means miscast in this interoperation. It, like “Smile Like You Mean It,” is straightforward in its execution—the manic edge it teeters on, as Slocum howls the iconic lines, “And the talking leads to touching and the touching leads to sex—and then there is no mystery left” is a marvel to hear, though—delivered with kind of karaoke sincerity, and it sounds like the band is having an absolute blast in bashing this out, pushing it into a place, especially in the chorus, with a little more ferocity. 

*

I don’t miss my friends—I miss a time and a place.

You’re not haunted—you just miss everything.

I present to you a contradiction. However, within this contraction, both of these things can exist—they can both be true.

If you will allow me, and if I may break the fourth wall and address you directly, it was always going to be about this. This contradiction. I was just surprised at how quickly it became about something else. 

Released as the first single from the new material included on A Brief Intermission, and sequenced second on the LP’s first side, the song “Cocaine and Lexapro” is about entirely much more than the opening line implies—about missing a time and a place. It is, however, a perfect opening line. The kind of writing that knocks the wind out of you. Because something that is so compelling about the band, and Dylan Slocum’s writing is the way he can turn a specific phrase. A single line. The startling poignancy and resonance it has.

‘I don’t miss my friends—I miss a time and a place,” of course, has a life within the context of the song. But it does offer a reflection on something much larger. It lives outside of that. We find ourselves in it. 

You can miss people certainly. The friends you have fallen out of touch with. I think more than anything, in time, what I have come to understand is you miss the idea of them. And what you really miss is the time and the place that they are representative of. 

There is a sense of restraint that “Cocaine and Lexapro” operates from within, both in its arrangement and in Slocum’s vocals, as well as in the eerie guest turn from singer and songwriter Kevin Devine, who provides the second verse. Spanish Love Songs are, of course, capable of creating tunes that are enormous, or anthemic, but this barely rises above what I would consider to be a whisper—at least a whisper for them. There is a hazy, dreamy feeling to it, as it begins, slowly gathering momentum with rippling synthesizers, understated percussion, and muted, echoing guitar noodling—a quiet, somberness in it that is reflected in both the vocals, and the songwriting. There is a brief, dramatic, punctuative flair that occurs in the moments when the chorus builds up, and a slight ascension and layering that happens as the song reaches its climax. But, in operating within this sense of tension, there is never any real release offered.

There is a desperate kind of excess depicted in Slocum’s lyricism on “Cocaine and Lexapro.” Excess, I suppose, should be evident from the title. After the opening line, he concedes that he simply misses the age when he was both living okay and living cheap—again, the implication of an age we are however far removed from now, and an existence with fewer responsibilities. “Beaumont truck stop casino—I’m near prone, and tapping on Keno,” he recalls, as the verse continues. “Warm cocktails, cocaine, and Lexapro. Early dementia—help me get back to sleep.”

There is a glibness to how this excess, then, is described in the song’s chorus—done as a means of potentially trying to locate any humor in a moment where there is little, if any, to be found, and to, I think, humanize this experience as depicted. “A problem’s not a problem ’til you call it by name. A pilot’s still a pilot ’til he crashes the plane,” Slocum attests. “I swear I have control—just like a universe expanding. I try not to think about landing.”

Those lines, then, later changing when the chorus returns, and there is a surrender then, to the desperation, and the sorrow, that comes with the excess. “Who gives a fuck about landing.”

A problem’s not a problem until you call it by name.

Something that is so compelling about the band, and the songwriting, are these specific phrases. Single lines. The startling poignancy and resonance. The life they have within the context of the song. But there are these reflections on something much larger. The lives outside of that. Where we find ourselves. Where I find myself.

I have, for the last two years, referred to it using the expression “a fraught relationship with alcohol,” based on language I had read elsewhere. It becomes a problem when you identify it as a problem. It becomes a problem when you think, as you take a sip from your second drink of the evening, maybe this is a problem. Or something I should find concerning. It becomes a problem when your best friend says to you, very plainly, “Nobody with as many mental health problems as you have should be drinking at all let alone the amount you are, every day.”

The point of acknowledgment, and understanding, is different for everyone. But we arrive. And there are these lines, then, that resonate. The poignancy. We take it with us and it lives beyond the context. It isn’t out of shame, or disappointment with ourselves. Nor really. More than anything, at least here, it is a reminder. 

We miss times and places. A feeling. The pasts we romanticize. Beautiful. Tumultuous. Formative. My final year in college—the summer of 2004 until the spring of the following year. An infinite feeling I know I can never return to, nor am I trying to, but that doesn’t prevent me from thinking about this period. The people I knew. The implication of an age far removed from the one I am now and the lack of responsibilities. 

Your life is, perhaps, as mine is, full of similar instances or circumstances. From different times. That infinite feeling. You never realize how fleeting it is in the moment. Relationships and connections you do not realize are forged on something flimsy until those people become characters in stories you no longer tell as often as you once did, if you tell them at all. And you realize that you miss the time and the place, more than anything. Whoever you were then. Before the life you have now.

You’re not haunted—you just miss everything.

And I present to you this contraction. It was, at least at first, always going to be about this. It, very quickly, became about something else. 

Both of these things can be true. They can both exist. 

And I have found myself lost, I suppose, in different elements, or facets, of A Brief Intermission in The Flattening of Time. It is a collection that gives so much for us to consider. This contradiction, found within the first side, was what I was most compelled by initially. 

Though, what I have come to understand, is that there are opposing directions placed within this contradiction, making it slightly less of one. The opening lines to “Cocaine and Lexapro” are first-person—it is a self-reflection. And the exclamation, “You’re not haunted—you just miss everything,” from the smoldering, stirring No Joy Sessions version of “Haunted” offers commentary or observation about someone else. 

The off-stage character whom the majority of “Haunted” is about.

The off-stage character. 

Characters in stories that we no longer tell as often as we once did, if we tell them at all now.

I miss a time and a place. And I remember the moment I, retrospectively, resigned in acknowledgement but not in understanding the slow fade of a friendship. A relationship forged on something ultimately flimsy. Unsustainable in the end. And this wasn’t even the last conversation we ever had. Just a memory. This moment. Mid-October. Unseasonably warm. The sun setting—the early evening sky pink and orange. A voice on the other end of the telephone. The conversation becoming stagnant. Both of us maybe realizing we had run out of things to say, or that we no longer had similar or shared interests. Or that the in how flimsy, and in how unsustainable things were, we understood that we were already too far removed from the time and place. She was certain she’d be losing cellular service, the longer the conversation went. The further she drove away. Her voice cuts out. There is no goodbye. 

“Haunted,” as it appears on A Brief Intermission is another song that takes the bombast, and enormity of its original form, and turns it inward—the jittery enthusiasm and explosiveness that powers the version from No Joy has been replaced with an introspection and a heaviness. The pacing, once brisk, is not slowed to a trudge exactly. But it moves with shuffling thought and intention. Beginning, as many of these songs do, with the pensive, hollow strum of the acoustic guitar, as the other elements wait in the wings for their cue. The percussive elements hit like a thud—muted, understated, but there is an edge and a crispiness at the punch of the drum.  And as “Haunted” collects itself and finds its rhythm, there are these dreamier textures that weave in and out—a thick, rolling bass note that you can hear flicked, atmospheric underscoring that pools underneath, especially during the bridge, and the flutters and flourishes of the synthesizer allow the song to exist, and exist extremely well, in a space where the organic intimacy of an “acoustic version” converges with a more robust and nuanced arrangement. 

There is a connective thread, or at least something mildly self-referential, to the opening line and image of “Haunted,” and a lyric from the song “Lifers.” “You’re not sure why, but when you leave the house, you circle the block to cry.” Here, as the chords ring out from the acoustic guitar, Slocum opens with, “You pulled off the road to cry—it’s too quiet in the suburbs. You searched your mind to try to find where the bottom really was.”

“Haunted,” in its lyrics, is a horribly evocative portrait of someone just out of reach. “You sleep with the window open and hope the cold gets in your heart,” Slocum observes before the chorus arrives, where he is understanding, but direct in his sentiments. “You’re not haunted,” he surmises. “You just miss everything. You’re not a ghost—so stop disappearing.”

Those sentiments continue throughout, when the chorus returns, though as Slocum often does in his lyricism, the words are altered slightly to continue the forward motion of the narrative. “You’re not a cautionary tale so don’t you vanish on me,” he chides midway through the song. 

And something that is so compelling about the band, and this songwriting, are specific phrases. The way they hang. How they resonated. The startling poignancy. The way they live outside of the context of the song, because of the way we find ourselves in them.

“You’re not haunted, it’s just the devil in your skin,” Slocum continues, in the final chorus, before uttering one of the most harrowing phrases. “It’ll be this bleak forever—but it is a way to live.”

“You’re not alone,” he continues, directing the song’s sentiments back to a specific individual. “You just miss everything. So when you’re feeling like a ghost,” he pleads. “Would you come haunt me—come haunt me please.”

Within songwriting such as this, there is not always a resolution—as much as we may want answers, easy or otherwise. “Haunted” reflects on a portrait of someone just out of reach, and a fear that comes along with that. Sometimes a voice cuts out. Sometimes there is no goodbye. You cannot rewrite yourself into the story of someone who is actively working, whether they realize it or not, to erase you. There is, however, a moment of resolve here, in the song’s afterward, as Slocum wanders through a series of vivid fragments, leaving us with a small moment of hope. 

“It’s every trip into that house—the silence from the street. Your blanket in your seat. The nearly muted TV. There’s no answer for you, and your phone blinks with my reply. It’s that lump in my chest, and my relief to hear you cry.”

You can miss everything. You can miss a time and a place. Do you miss the people? The characters in stories you no longer tell as often as you once did, if you feel moved to tell them at all now? 

You cannot hold onto everyone. Or everything. Especially someone, or something that does not wish to be held onto. Sometimes a voice cuts out. Sometimes there is no goodbye. 

*

I know what they say when I walk in the light—there’s no joy in my life.

Maybe a week or so before Christmas, at her behest, my best friend and I began taking time, each day, to exchange gratitude. “There’s so much to be grateful for,” we, as best as we are able to, repeat in unison while on the phone. “Do you want to go first,” she will ask me. Then we will share, for that day, the things that we are grateful for.

And it has been helpful for both of us to set aside this time. To center ourselves, respectively, with three deep breaths before we begin. To repeat the expression, “There is so much to be grateful for.” And to give consideration to the things, large, or small, or even inconsequential, within our days, that we appreciate. 

This practice, or exchange, itself becomes a small act of refusal. Or an unwillingness to totally surrender or indulge. The Sad Thing asks very little, if anything, of us in return. And it is so easy to fix your gaze upon it. Setting aside this time, every day, within intention, and holding one another accountable for it, complicates The Sad Thing, though. 

Because it does offer reminders, at a time when these reminders feel especially necessary, that there are these small, good things for us to cling to. 

If I might, once again, and if you will allow me this courtesy, I wish to break the fourth wall and directly address you. Because what I return to, again and again, is how bad everything is right now. Nothing feels good. It hasn’t, for a long time, but it is only recently that I have been able to truly acknowledge it. I am, of course, looking inward here. And I wonder what do you do, if anything, within this acknowledgment. It is easy to surrender, indulge—too easy. The Sad Thing, again, asks so little of you in return. But we refuse. We keep going. We look for the small things, every day. We repeat, in unison, with our best friend on the other end of the telephone line, “There is so much to be grateful for.” 

Something that is so compelling about Spanish Love Songs, and specifically Dylan Slocum’s songwriting, is the way he can turn a specific phrase—just a single line, in a song, and the kind of poignancy, and resonance it can have. How these lines have a life within the context of the song yes—sometimes, in fact, being the entire conceit to the song in question. But they can, and often will, offer a reflection of something much larger, allowing them to really live.

There’s no joy in my life. There’s no joy when I’m right.

The titular phrase, No Joy, is from the song “Pendulum,” which is the first of the five tracks from the No Joy Sessions. In its original version, from the album, the song slinks and skitters along, before quickly finding its way into the bombastic, towering, anthemic heights it soars to during the shout-along chorus—though even in how enormous it sounds, it moves with a kind of intentional pacing. A shuffle that works from a place of restraint—a few steps away from the unrelenting exuberance or breathlessness you hear elsewhere.

It is fascinating how the group arranges “Pendulum” for this pared-down version—specifically in comparing it to the harrowing, somber, and dramatic turns that “Here You Are” and “Clean Up Crew” take. 

People will never tire of being told to look at The Sad Thing. It is easy to fix your gaze upon. And to be offered the opportunity to wallow, or to catch the unflattering glimpses of yourself in the reflection it casts. There is a comfort in the surrender and in the indulgence. The Sad Thing asks for little in return. If anything at all.

There is a contradiction presented in Spanish Love Songs. A subversion. The band’s material challenges us to give consideration to what is beyond a seemingly unending sense of sorrow. Because there is a sorrow depicted, often in graphic detail, within Slocum’s songwriting but it is the way this is smartly juxtaposed with the voluminous, rollicking, and jubilant instrumentation and arranging. Offering a distraction. And an intersection. The place where sorrow and joy converge. The place that challenges us to give consideration to what is on the other side of sorrow—gazing that far out, over the darkness, itself an act of refusal. 

“Pendulum” in a contrast to the other Sessions recordings, leans further into that jubilance, with the group reinterpreting it with a much faster, emergent tempo—propelled forward by a surprisingly ramshackle, indie-folk adjacent aesthetic, merging the organic sounds of the thudding kick drum and the crisp, steady snare and hi-hat, the quickly strummed acoustic guitar, and a harmonica, with subtle additional flourishes and textures like ripple of a second guitar that comes in before the first chorus, and the buzzy tones of the synthesizer melody that courses through before the second verse starts. 

I am remiss to say that Slocum, in his writing, is often an alarmist. His reflections are deeply personal, of course, but he also often writes about the larger anxieties he is plagued with—environmental catastrophe is a common theme, and the mortality of himself and others has played large roles. Mortality, then, as well as fear and isolation, play much larger roles in the songs from No Joy, which was recorded in 2022 and offers Slocum a chance to write about his experiences during the pandemic.

The opening line to “Pendulum” is arresting in what is, at first, seemingly a metaphor. “The vampires come at four in the morning,” he bellows. “Out for blood with their spotlight on me—I think about dying, but it sounds too lonely.”

Slocum explains that the opening line itself is something his grandmother said when she was in the hospital, and COVID. “The image is terrifying to think of,” he said when explaining the song’s imagery in an interview. “It was one of the last full conversations we had. It’s heartbreaking to think about, especially during COVID, when nobody could be in the hospital with her.”

A feeling, or sensation, that a song will sometimes conjure, for me, as a listener, is the sound of someone both running away from something while also running towards it. I am uncertain if that makes sense. But there is a propulsion I feel sometimes. A lot of Spanish Love Songs’ material has that feeling. This Sessions recording of “Pendulum,” in the kind of bouncy, stompy, folk aesthetic it is arranged around, has that propulsive nature. It is a song about death. Slocum admits as much. But, in the way it is written through a lens that is poetic, vague, and reflective, it presents the complication. It asks just to consider that there is more. That there are good things and we are grasping towards them, yes, but we are also propelling ourselves towards somebody we hope will understand, more than anything else. 

“You love who you love and I melt when you walk into the room,” Slocum explains in the chorus. “And we want what we want, but we can’t sort it out. Everything in its place—my sentimental heartache, wait for the pendulum to go.”

We have so much to be grateful for. It is, perhaps, difficult to be mindful of that. Because what I return to, still, is how bad everything feels right now in this moment you and I are in together. Nothing feels good. And it hasn’t for a long time. And it is perhaps easier when someone is holding you accountable and you take a moment, each day, to exchange and reflect on the small, good things. 

It is compelling. How there are these phrases—here, it is of course the key to the entire song, really. But there are these lines that have a poignancy and resonance to them. The life within the context. How it goes on to live when it offers a reflection on something much larger.

“I know what they say when I walk in the light,” Slocum scoffs in the chorus. “There’s no joy in my life. There’s no joy when I’m right.”

*

The restless toiling and subsequent commercial success of Jimmy Eat World, at the very end of the 1990s into the early 2000s, is well documented, or at least understood within their mythology. Dropped from a major label and without the backing or support of another secured, the group went over budget in the studio working on their third full-length, Bleed American. And, like a lot of third albums (Born to Run, London Calling), it was a make-or-break situation—the risk that needed to pay off. 

The band’s fourth full-length, Futures, released in October of 2004, is not the sound of a band that had become entirely too big, entirely too quickly. Rather, I think it is the sound of a band grappling with a new and potentially unexpected identity, and the uncertainty of what comes next.

Initial recording sessions with their longtime producer and champion Mark Trombino ultimately led to a creative falling out—Jimmy Eat World regrouped and began working in earnest on Futures with producer Gil Norton, who had worked with The Pixies, Foo Fighters, and had helmed the Counting Crows’ 1996 album Recovering The Satellites. Norton, admittedly, is the kind of producer similar to Rick Rubin or Brian Eno, who steps out from behind the recording console and offers more creative input and direction during the sessions. 

Futures is not overworked, exactly, through Norton’s role within the process. However, it is enormous in sound and scope. Labored over, in a way where the returns might be diminishing. Almost a kind of “too big to fail” mentality. The sound of a band getting lost in bombast, and in themselves, forgoing the kind of nervy, thoughtful desperation that made both Clarity, from 1999, and Bleed American, as impactful as they were. 

A time. A place. Autumn 2004. I was 21. In my final year of college. A past romanticized. I tell you all of that to tell you this—there were songs, yes, that did resonate with me from Futures, but it certainly is where my interest in Jimmy Eat World began to wane. “Futures,” the album’s enormous, crunchy opening track, was not one, at the time, that did connect with me. Its lyrics, vaguely political, were written as a response to the disillusionment of Bush’s first term—“I hope for better in November,” Jim Adkins mused, in a line that already felt beyond its expiration date with the song, and album, arriving so closely to the 2004 election. 

This was always going to be about one thing. The contradiction. I was surprised at how quickly it became about something else.

I am even more surprised at where it ends. 

Three of the four covers included on the Doom and Gloom EP are originally from 2004. A time. A place. Certainly not one that I am trying to return to. I cannot, of course. This past I have romanticized. A formative time. The implication of youth. Fewer responsibilities. 

A Jimmy Eat World cover on Doom and Gloom is not surprising, really, given how I would contend that a band like Spanish Love Songs exists, in part, because of the rise and success of bands like Jimmy Eat World in the early to mid-2000s. And this cover of “Futures” here, arriving as the penultimate song on A Brief Intermission in The Flattening of Time, the more I sit with it, the more the choice to cover it makes sense. It is dramatic in how it swells, especially in both the chorus and the lines leading right up to it. It is also musically a little more on the aggressive side—powered by bashed out percussion, and chugging, powerful guitar chords that are given just enough dynamism in the mix that they stop short of forming a wall of noise. 

There is a smoothness, or a soothing nature to the voice of Jim Adkins, the principal lyricist and lead singer of Jimmy Eat World. His voice often boldly ascends, but there is a tenderness to it, which does soften some of the messaging in “Futures.” Time, and age, have given it a chance to live, or to be better understood, and appreciated, I think. Or, at least, within this context, it is offering that. It captures a moment of unease and uncertainty that has become too familiar. And, here, Slocum leans into the anxious snarl in his voice, which lends itself to the sheer desperation, and the search for hope, or something good, however small, to cling to, which is at the core of the song. 

This was always going to be about one thing. I am surprised at where it ends.

What I return to is how bad everything is right now. Nothing feels good. It hasn’t for a long time, and it is only recently that I have been able to acknowledge that. What do you do, then, in that acknowledgment? 

“I always believed in futures,” Slocum shouts in the opening line. “I hope for better in November. I try the same losing lucky numbers,” he continues, before adding, “It could be a cold night for a lifetime.”

“I could always count on futures,” he sings in the second verse. “That things would look up, and the look up. Why is it so hard to find the balance between living decent and the cold and real?”

The lyrics to “Futures” are sparse, or fragmented, only in the sense that they are short phrases more or less used as vessels to get us to the heights, and the sentiments of the chorus. Which is fine. It is a song that wishes to be received as an anthem. And in that, it is successful. However. I would contend that the more important, or impactful things to give consideration to within the song, especially now—right now, in this very moment that you and I are in, are found in the writing just before “Futures” takes off. “Hey now, you can’t keep saying endlessly,” Slocum sings with an anxious shiver in his voice. “My darling—how long until this affects me?”

“Hey now,” he says again. “What is it you think you see? My darling—now’s the time to disagree.”

And there is a cloying nature to the bridge—“What matters is what hasn’t been,” and “Believe your voice can mean something,” but, there is a suspension of disbelief that I am willing to entertain because regardless of how hard the song wishes to hit you over the head with its message, it is extraordinarily powerful. This feeling it creates. It is moving. 

I am surprised at where this ends. How stirring this is and how emotional this makes me. And I am of course turning this inward with what I keep returning to. How everything is bad right now. How nothing feels good. But I of course have to turn this outside of myself as well. I simply cannot mince words. There is, as there has been, a genocide happening to the people of Palestine. There are ICE agents in my community, down the street from me, breaking the window of a car and pulling a man out against his will while his family watches. There are ICE agents in my community, parked in front of my house, their engine idling as they sit behind tinted windows, not even flinching when approached and asked why they are here or what they are doing. 

Renee Good was murdered on January 7th by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Shot three times, while in the driver’s seat of her car. 

Nothing feels good. This moment we are in. You and I. This moment right now. How can you not see that? What do you do with this acknowledgement? How loud can you scream into a void? What do you do with your anger or your sorrow or your disappointment or your frustration. 

Sometimes all we have are these acts of refusal. However small. The smallest things in our days. We have so much to be grateful for and there are these shreds of hope we clutch onto as means of complicating The Sad Thing and choosing not to surrender or indulge completely. 

There is this feeling, or a sensation, that a song will sometimes conjure for me as a listener. It’s the sound of someone both running away from something while also running, often headfirst, carelessly, towards it. I am uncertain if this makes sense to you. Truthfully, I don’t care if you do not understand. If when you listen to music you completely miss the point of the experience. That there is more than just hearing something—the melody, the production. Whatever. Yes that is part of it but there is the feeling and that is what I am concerned with. There is a propulsion here. It surges through the song, and Jimmy Eat World’s original recording of “Futures” has this, but this cover homes in on this feeling. This frenetic dash toward the horizon that feels like it is getting closer, while still being terribly out of reach. And there is the hope or the promise of something less awful than this moment right now if you are able to make it. 

*

I think the thing that is so compelling about Spanish Love Songs and specifically Dylan Slocum’s songwriting, is the way he can turn a specific phrase. Just a single line, in a song. And the kind of poignancy and resonance it can have. I am thinking of the moments of tension that build towards the end of “Routine Pain,” from Brave Faces Everyone. “Am I gonna be this down forever?” he asks, before the song completely shatters into pieces. “Have you ever felt lower than everyone else?,” he screams in a kind of anguish that comes from a terrible place from deep within. “I wanna see how much lower I can go.” 

I am thinking of the vivid, haunting lines from that album’s title track, and what is unspoken but understood in how they hang in the air. “I’m always looking up, and you’re jumping.”

These lines have a life within the context of the song, yes. But they can, and often will, offer a reflection of something much larger, which allows them to live outside of that. Beyond that. How we find ourselves in them. 

I think about the quiet, dejected way he sings, “I hate the rhythm of our lives these days,” in the song “Beach Front Property.” I have spent the last year returning to that expression specifically, over and over. 

There is a dissatisfaction that I have been unable to escape from. “You don’t love anything you used to,” Slocum sings at the start of “Lifers Too.” “You’re worried if you can ever find something new.”

Because I do worry it is always going to be like this. That is what I return to. Nothing feels good anymore and hasn’t for such a long time. And that it isn’t going to change. That I will continue to limp through these days—however many of them I am allowed, and I will feel dissatisfied and frustrated that the flashes of excitement or exuberance are gone. 

There is this beautiful, and truly inspiring quote from Hanif Abdurraqib that I read, near the end of 2025, when he was answering questions through his Instagram stories—someone asked him about his forthcoming book of poetry, the title of which is I’m Always Looking Up and You’re Jumping, and if the work was more in conversation with No Joy, or Brave Faces Everyone, or both records. 

Aburraqib refers to No Joy as a massively informative album and then goes on to say this—something that I have not been able to stop thinking about. 

“It is so easy to sell people on sadness or melancholy as primary feelings without complication. People will likely never tire of being told to look at The Sad Thing, but No Joy is an achievement for how it complicates the primary feeling and says ‘This world is not tenable for me, or my brain, or my heart, but I have chosen, despite this, to stay alive. I would like to not subtract myself from the world even though I don’t always know how to best survive in it.”

This world is not tenable for me. It hasn’t been. I don’t always know how best to survive in it, but I am still here. 

Something that I do not think about very often, though perhaps it would behoove me to, is perception. The way I wish to be perceived. The way I am perceived. The disconnection that occurs between the two of those things. 

Because who am I, then. Or what do you know of me. How do you think of me. Am I the contrarian. The curmudgeon. The gruff exterior but sweet. This is perhaps all you know, or think of, then. What are the ways that I have been misunderstood. What do you really know of me, or my brain, or my heart.

I think of the single line, in “Pendulum.” “I am changing in a visceral way.”

How have I changed. How does that challenge your perception. How have you not changed. Or maybe the better question is why are you unwilling to. 

I know what they say when I walk in the light. There is no joy in my life. There is no joy when I’m right. There is no joy. There has not been. And I am so afraid it is going to feel like this forever. This world is simply not tenable. But we have so much to be grateful for. We have so much to be grateful for. We have so much to be grateful for. It is easy to look at The Sad Thing, but it is more challenging to complicate The Sad Thing, and desperately cling to, however small, or however insignificant, or however fleeting, these moments. The good things. That we hope will propel us over the horizon of the sorrow we have been unable to see beyond. 

A Brief Intermission in The Flattening of Time is out now via Pure Noise.