158. Song No. 2,360: “Dead End Thanks,” Horse Feathers
So It is With Us, 2014

1.

Sooooo I went back to the De’s after making some pretty significant headway in the Do’s because I felt like I missed way too many songs in that wide swath of tunes (which is turning out to the be the biggest problem with playing music as background noise while working, especially when I’m in the zone and not really paying much attention to my surroundings). I think my final to-write-about list was, like, four songs from the De’s, which was a paltry showing from 138 tracks that collectively deserved better.

This song was my near-instant reward for backtracking. I’d apparently loved it on both Last.fm and Spotify but didn’t earmark it for further consideration. And it is just too good to not love on.

2.

Fuuuuck, do I love Horse Feathers. And when they’re especially good, they are on lushly layered, brilliantly incandescent fire.

I absolutely love how, with an evolving melody and lyrics written with an eye to the future, it reframes a parting of ways as something to celebrate rather than mourn. Horse Feathers is largely excellent at pulling off incredible emotional juxtapositions, but it’s a master-class showcase here. The misdirection, I think, is what makes “Dead End Thanks” especially remarkable, with the song floating in on a melancholy introduction before bursting into the room in a hail of beautiful, illuminating sunshine heralding a merciful end.

3.

With the changing of minds
A new tune must be sung
While choking on old air
That’s up in our lungs

I have spent almost the entirety of the pandemic thinking about friendship. I’ve read every article I can find (and, eventually, that the all-knowing algorithms started plastering directly onto my news feeds) and realized that it took a seismic societal shift to get people to start writing think pieces, eulogies and meditations on the shattering of close platonic bonds that became a growing COVID-era trend as people began to reconsider the landscapes of their personal connections.

With my best friend moving halfway across the country this spring (just days after my birthday, because this absolutely needs to be about me), I moped with a grown-up emo kid’s prodigious aptitude for bursting into seemingly unprovoked tears before allowing myself to admit I was deeply unhappy with the bench I had left. Which is unfair, because there are a lot of wonderful people I’m lucky to call my family of the heart, but I was letting a few perhaps past-their-expiration-date ties rot on the vine instead of just letting them go.

This might be a song about a romantic dissolution, but I felt it so hard in the part of me that wishes there were more formal, artistic or self-help avenues acknowledging just how much it sucks to realize some friendships have outlasted their natural lifespan and have become energy drains of obligation that feel a little bit like the emotional hostage situation that is growing up with narcissist parents. And, man, I have spent way too much time and money on getting over those years to let anything evening remotely akin to them back into my life, especially when I have given so much of myself to people who now only seem capable of taking more when I wanted so badly to believe they were capable of being so much better than that. Though I’m sure I’m wearing on them just as unfavorably.

Some people are only meant to be temporary, and it’s a hard pill to swallow when you’ve misidentified them as the family you’ve chosen to make for yourself. Sometimes that widening wedge is time increasing the distance between your once-intertwined paths, sometimes it’s trying to smush someone into a role they were never made for, sometimes it’s just the nature of relationships and the happenstance of being at the same place at the same time for a little while rather than the forever you erroneously assumed.

I’m wide awake and have honestly seen
By dream and by sign
Two people just run out of time