On Return, there are heavy footsteps in the form of the percussion, vertiginous guitar riffs, spinning; the end sounds like someone is welding, like two shrill things chafing against each other, sonic discomfort. “In the stillness / I stopped searching.” The instrumental is unchanging, stagnant, still. “The doves came home / They came back to me / I came back to me,” it is the mourning dove she is talking about, famous for its plangent cooing call. She came back with the doves. She is a mourning dove, and now she is singing just as mournfully as they coo.
On Draw the Line, “What’s begun? / What will last?” “What’s to come? / What’s to pass?” The first set of questions is asked about the present and then the future that is spawned from the present, and the second set of questions is asked about the future and then the present, giving way to the future. There is a loop here, “I’m still stuck,” as demonstrated by the reiterative questions. It all comes back around.
Then there is Waited for You. “I don’t want to look back,” indicates an aversion to the past. “Are you worth it? I still reach for you” questions the worth of that person, which is moot when, in the same breath and in the same line, she proclaims that she still reaches for them regardless. There’s a reverbed guitar that dilates and then dies down, ensconcing the song, like something orbiting or haunting the song, just like the way she says, “The echoes whispеr your voice in my head / Your voice in my hеad.” The instrumentation reclines and sways good-naturedly as if it is an arm that is gradually going numb from the weight of waiting so long for this person. There is no conscious movement anymore; she is just occasionally nudged here and there by the “cold and grey sky” that she is idling under.
On Cecilia, the theme of waiting and stagnation is present. Whoever or whatever Cecilia is, they are a beacon. But one bar of light does not seem to be enough. Especially if it refuses to even show up. There seems to be a running theme of softly muttering into the void, perhaps because of a past of screaming that never paid off. The instrumental goes on for a while, then gulps a breath and renews itself. Seems like wishful thinking. Vicariously living through the song.
Smoke gives you a faster pace. “I wrote my name on the fog of the train window / It disappeared before I learned how to let go,” nothing lasts. There is no legacy when you look back on your life. “I move like smoke / Through a crowded room,” she feels like she is something people would bat away from their face. Nothing that captures; something that capitulates. She disappears out of the room by moving through it just like the song tapers off by moving forward. If you think about it, staying still is the way to go because when you move forward, you are only getting closer and closer to the end. “If I close my eyes / Would I disappear?” As a result of this negligibility, she questions whether she would just stop existing if she stopped paying attention to the world. If she doesn’t move toward her own evaporation, does she stop existing?
She summarizes the point of Shed in one line: “Maybe it’s time to learn to live with the skin we will never shed.” This skin bears the reminders of all that has happened to you. If you reconcile with how it looks, you have surmounted your aversion to the past and the enormity of its shadow over your being. A turning point on the album. Possibly.
She repeats this line on I Always Knew: “I see my reflection in them / An aftertaste,” when she looks into this person’s eyes, there’s the initial thrill of appreciating this person’s eyes, but then the aftertaste kicks in, her own eyes reflected in theirs. How she is seen still unnerves her.
If Today Was Yesterday has the self-evident chorus: “If today was yesterday / Could I meet myself halfway?” The theme of the past being both revolting and redemptive continues. This time the instrumental takes breaks, and there is a flourish of a guitar that sounds like a glimmer twinkling in the dark. A guitar that sounds like a respite. Like hope. Could you rejuvenate your life by fantasizing about the present being the past, or are you just wasting time that way? And does that matter if the mere thought of it lifts your mood?
On In the End, the instrumental is quick-paced while the vocals are behind on the pace. “Standing still as I’m watching / Everybody go,” is proof of that being the case.
Too Late is a unique song on the record. “I will always be too late.” She will never catch a break from time. She will always lose the race against time because time is inexorable like the sound of an instrument. You could muffle it, sure, but it still runs its course and blares out its existence. Time behaves the same way. On many of these songs, the instrumentation seems to be out of sync with the vocals as the vocals stretch out and drawl and the instrumentation flutters and stops cold. She will always be in her own head, unaware. She will always be too late.
Eclipse contains the line: “Like an eclipse we come and go.” Just like an eclipse or migrating birds, this connection dips in and out of obscurity. But the door is always half open. There is always hope. Eclipses happen. Rarely. But they still happen. And birds always fly back home. These are things that you can count on, and now she is asking, “What about you?” because she wants to know if she can truly count on this bond or relationship.
Someone, Always has a message that epitomizes the themes of the album. Memory embodies longing. Longing embodies an ache. And talking about it can dull that ache. “You seem to miss them more than you will ever say / Say it now.” But she is at odds: “What is left to do? / What is left to say?” Longing can breed hope. But it can also drive you to the brink of giving up entirely. Somewhere in between the two lies the bittersweetness of waiting. And waiting can loosen the cruelty of time.
Signs has an acoustic guitar that sounds like bells being rung because she is more optimistic here: “I believe I will see you soon / And I believe you can hear me sing this tune,” and with these ringing bells, she is sending out musical smoke signals to the other person, asking for a sign in return.
It is very apt to end the album on a question. “Are you lost or are you blind?” Are you looking for your home or are you directionless? Do you have a purpose that you have misplaced or are you purposeless? “You become what you deny,” she says here. And throughout the album, she has been denying the passage of time, the natural progression of change, and the existence of the past, so she “Fade with time / Don’t know why / As you pass me by.” And she can’t help but ask, “Is this the end here tonight?”
Longing. Hope. And somewhere in between, there is waiting. But for how long? Is this the end here tonight? And if it is, the end of what? Longing? Hope? Waiting? Well, there is no limit to longing. There is no capacity to hope. And there is no expiration date on waiting. But the doves came home. “What about you?” Are you coming home?
Written by Leo August
