It's been almost two years since an excited conversation about a song at a bar on a Monday night sparked a series of emails that eventually begat this blog. In honor of its continued awesomeness, I'm more than delighted to step in and cast a different perspective on the conversation. Anyway, on to the music. This is the first song I ever heard from one of my favorite bands, and much like a first drunken kiss in the middle of street, that fact leaves a little mark in your memory forever. It's hard not to have a soft spot for that.
In my head, the protagonist of this song is sitting in an orange plastic chair in the badly lit waiting room of a hospital in rural Nebraska. He's just blacked out at the wheel of his car, wrecked it, and suffered a concussion. Naturally, the hospital won't release him until someone comes to get him, and in this moment he's realised that he has no one to call - unless he calls his wife, who hasn't spoken to him since he confessed his affair with one of the neighbors. And naturally, he's freaked out because he's having a midlife crisis and he's not so sure if there's a God, and he hasn't seen the inside of a church in decades anyway.
In real life, I'm 99% sure this song is not about that guy, but I do know that by the time the harmonies kick in at the end, your heart is basically destroyed. It's totally worth it though, I promise.
Okkervil River - The Velocity of Saul At the Time of His Conversion
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