This whole album is full of sparse and emotional piano-driven gems, which allows Spencer Krug's (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake) brittle poetry to really shine through.
This song is steeped in sadness, and to me really just epitomizes the full breakdown of love. The sort that not only destroys a relationship, but also eviscerates your image of self, but also how you interact with your physical reality, and necessitates some introspection and growth in order to pick up the pieces.
Love is sort of like light. It needs darkness in order to exist and be appreciated, and I don't think you can really appreciate the highs of the feeling until you've sunk to the depths of its absence. In fact, I think the absence is still love. Love can have a negative or a positive existence, but it's all love, and all part of celebrating the human experience.
(There's also a full-band version of this song that is equally good, but in a different ways)
Feb 14, 2024
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yes, we all recognize “somebody that I used to know,” but not enough appreciation is given to this wonderful gem that sounds like you’re crying whilst riding a camel and wistfully smoking a ciggie. so much is going on in this song and it’s powerful from both an emotional and compositional standpoint. the lyrics “love ain’t safe, you won’t get hurt if you stay chaste” are so beautifully painful and I deeply appreciate music that can completely tear me apart with such eloquence.
Jan 23, 2024
im using this song for a short film i have to make for school so i cant stop thinking about “now i’ll fake it every single day til i dont need fantasy, til i feel you leave”
this lyric, to me, means so much more than romantic love, or love at all. to me, it means family. it means hate. it means loss. drugs. media. art. life, even. this whole album means so much more to
me than most. she saved it all for me.
Mar 8, 2025
This entire album, The Art of Forgetting, details Caroline Rose’s break-up from their partner and the heartache that Rose experienced as a result. That heartache is especially felt in this KEXP performance that ends with Rose in tears, singing “You’ve got to get through this life somehow.“
Jan 11, 2025
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I don't know how well this actually answers your initial question, I think it's more of a counterpoint to some of the stuff people have already said, but here it goes.
In the past (prior to social media or search engines) specific styles, specialized knowledge, and niche awareness actually took effort. You had to go out into the world and find a scene, be accepted, participate in it, contribute to it, and learn from others with specific knowledge within the specific sub- or counter-cultural scene. It took time, effort, and experience to craft an identity. Nowadays people cycle through various identities and trends like commodities because it takes no effort (they're sold to them by social media algorithms, influencers, brand accounts, etc.). It comes to you in your phone without you ever even having to leave the house or put in the time to discover it or participate in it (you just follow specific people or subscribe). You can be a passive observer or consumer, not an active contributor. As a result, you're not invested or tied down and committed to that core identity. You can cosplay depending on your mood or who you want to momentarily convey yourself as, because it's easy. Essentially, being a poser has become normalized. An identity is now something to be momentarily consumed and affected, rather than grown, built, and developed over time.
Granted, it's always been different in regards to "mass" culture and popular trends (both in the past and now). Those are impossible to miss and were always monopolized by specific trend setting institutions, but always by the time it gets to that point, the actual initial counter- or sub-culture that inspired it has already been coopted and has started to disintegrate under the weight and attention of mass consumption.
Feb 18, 2024
It's an action deserving of its own nickname. My cat's name is Gomez, but when he crosses his paws like this, he turns into Hodgkins Plumpersocks.
Feb 2, 2024
I feel like everything about this photo captures that unique period of time - the covid masks, the protest signs, the boarded windows, the national guard.
I look at it now and I still feel glimmers of the hope I felt in that moment, when the rigid and all encompassing oppressive and systemic ruts of society felt like they were becoming more plastic and might even come undone. However, in retrospect, I am of course also hit with the ultimate disappointment, betrayal, and futility of it all.
So in that sense, it really captures that hovering sense of disillusionment and hope that I'm perpetually caught between within my day to day life.
Mar 30, 2024