February 1 - Alpha Gelida

February opens with a very Violent Femmes place. This is tense storytelling about love going wrong. Several parts of this feel like throw forwards to songs yet to come. The mentions of the young lions coming out has seeds of what will become the Sunset Tree. And the continued presence of, as John calls them, the Alpha Couple, pushes this song forward in time.

There's a number of clear advances in the musicality in this piece compared to where we were a month ago or even a couple of weeks ago. The storytelling forms are more pronounced, the feints into metaphor more earned by the narrative. Despite the old friend of the tape machine grumble in the background, the guitar work is more assured, and in its assurance comes something that is very distinctly a song rather than a poem set to music.

This isn't our first trip to the magic realism of domestic tension, but it feels like a bridge between earlier musings on this subject and the assured works that are on their way.