It’s not often that a track comes through our submissions backlog that hits me with a sense of nostalgia so bittersweet. In its bright guitars and carefree, swaying rhythm, Phantom Sugar’s “SAY IT TO MY FACE” characterizes the contrast between resentment boiling beneath the public guise of everything being alright when one is on the precipice of a separation. In particular, the crisp sound of Phantom Sugar’s fuzzy steel-string guitars mixed with the artist’s lackadaisical tenor vocals bring to mind the memory of being in a car driven by someone I can only pretend to love while hits by Paul McCartney in his solo career were only occasionally undercut by Green Day or Smash Mouth on the radio whenever I had the chance to claim the radio for myself. Only with Green Day did any of those songs scratch any deeper than a surface-level happiness, acting as total inversions of just what I felt. Phantom Sugar’s lyrics depict the dissonance clearly enough from the first line:
“I’m not surprised
that doesn’t mean that I’m not
terrified
the end is coming soon, love”
In a position like this, it’s not the end of the toxic bond itself that inspires fear. If anything, the freedom that comes from such a necessary severing is without a doubt incomparable to much else; what petrifies our narrator is likely the anticipation of the fallout once the guillotine’s blade first falls. Mutual acknowledgment of the love being lost sidesteps what commonly results in at least one heart inevitably being broken beyond repair. It’s scary enough, as someone’s partner, to hear the phrase “we need to talk” and knowing exactly what’s about to be discussed; it’s another fear entirely to have to be the one to say those words.
From this point, the lyrics tread ground all too painfully familiar to those who’ve walked that trail before: Some part of the narrator still holds onto the idea of their love, infatuated with it to the point where the temptation to carry on still very much exists. The chorus begins first with our narrator bracing for impact:
“Say it to my face, baby
tell me I’m the one who messed it up
and I’ve been here for days, waitin’
to hear you say ‘it’s not enough
love for me to go on happily'”
The song’s narrator knows just how much blame is coming. Much like the old law of “the one who smelt it, dealt it”, the party that vocalizes a problem in the relationship is often given displaced blame for said problem. If the issue is one of emotional distance, there will come a knee-jerk reply in the heat of the moment that the one who voiced the issue was the one not making themselves available and present; if the issue is their partner’s unfaithfulness, their partner will then project that infidelity onto the party free of such guilt as a defensive psychological response. Whatever the initiator has done will be called “not enough” by the recipient, all in an effort not to save the relationship but instead to save face. At the point our narrator has reached, it is safe to assume that both parties understand that their love cannot be meaningfully revived, and instead the recipient of this dreaded talk must defend their self-image, particularly their belief in themselves as not a good partner, but a “perfect partner”. While it is human nature to act on what we believe to be good intentions and defend what we believe to be true, it would be foolish to deny that this has blinded many of us to the hurt we’ve caused others in the past, the ones we love included in that number.
The bright, splashy sound of Phantom Sugar’s instrumental naturally provides a sharp contrast, as I’d said before, in a brilliant musical demonstration of scathing commentary through a tight, forced smile. If this track were paired with slow, melancholy piano, it would likely be less unique yet still recognizable for the exhausted and heartbroken lamentation that it is; instead, crashing cymbals and slick steel guitar solos give the song a more sardonic and strained feeling. It brings to mind the specific tension of attending a dinner party and hearing the hostess and her husband trade increasingly personal and hurtful “jokes” over the course of the night. The party is calm, if only because the obvious animosity has not yet escalated to screaming and fisticuffs, yet none of the laughter in that room is genuine—instead, one is more likely to hear similar chuckles from behind the protective plexiglass wall at a nuclear test site.
As the song climbs to its refrain, soft string synths carry the chords to then complete the “rose-tinted glasses” effect of Phantom Sugar’s instrumental with an invocation of the same emotional trigger often utilised by vintage films. The resulting saccharine signature feels like a twist of a knife, the eye of an emotional storm: certainly, it’s calmer, but it’s still in the dead-center of the vortex. Despite the song slowly tapering out to a close, its brevity leaves keen listeners with a sense of unease much akin to the narrator’s anxieties in the face of what he feels must be done.
While Phantom Sugar fills a specific niche with “SAY IT TO MY FACE”, those who find themselves thinking its lyrics to themselves when considering their relationship or relationships past will find solace in this track. It certainly struck something within me, bringing me back to my own dissonant anxieties and resentments in the wake of sounds and sights engineered to relax the mind. Sometimes the show we put on is just the opposite of what we feel within; “SAY IT TO MY FACE” reminds us of this and at least has the courtesy to do so with virtuosic flair and sick riffs.
Written by Alexei Lee
