It's without a doubt that we tend to make things so much harder than they should be. We screw up and we twist ourselves into the ground, just to look up at the roots and the feet above. We get ourselves locked into a disastrous feeling of loss and circumstance. We lose track of anything that we should really give a shit about and instead care most about the flimsy crud that's as longstanding and meaningful as a drifting scent. The years can be boiled down to very little, most of the time, and yet the fashionable thing is to worry yourself sick about the minute things that add up to nothing but pebbles and excuses, drivel. Montreal's Barr Brothers have no time for the empty calories of living, those non-dramatic, but overly sensitized flairs that are nothing but the filler between what's good and what's gone.
Brothers Brad and Andrew Barr write songs that are stuck together with sweat and the clamminess of living - the nervousness and the legitimacy of making something substantial carry on after the fact. They are songs that redeem us even when we didn't know that we needed anything like redemption. They are songs that make a body consider itself expendable, in the best possible way. It's as if - within the words that Brad sings - that we're able to witness our closest surviving relative or friend scattering our ashes in a solemn ceremony upon the water. It's just as if we were able to feel the impermanence and the permanence of everything in these captivating and moving songs of our fragility and what we make of it.
If anyone's going to level with us and call us on our own bullshit, it's always going to be ourselves giving us the hard lines and the once over. We'll be able to stare at our reflection, or o it without a mirror and just shake our head and mumble, "What the hell's your deal, asshole? Snap out of it." It's as if there need to be reminders delivered every so often - more often for certain people prone to get lost more easily - to show us that connections abound. Brad sings, "She says, "Hello, I'm a monster too/What poisons me/It poisons you.'" It's important to remember - that poison is poison to all and there are many ways to administer it. It's usually silent, heady and deadly. It's good to be reminded that there's no sweeter thing than to be kissing that soft cheek that you kiss every day, or those lips that you've come to take somewhat for granted. You forget sometimes.