It’s taken us 5 years but it’s worth it…

A collage of selves lay scattered, nestled in our memories, our sadness spread in ugly black smudges on the side of silk sheets, a good day in the form of a forgotten earring on an old friend’s nightstand, a favourite teddy still hoping in wait under our childhood bed. We are everywhere but within ourselves.

Lucy Dacus track Night shift explores the cognitive dissonance of a breakup, the longing for what can never be again and the gratitude of what can never be again. A broken heart is a second chance, another go, an opportunity for growth whilst simultaneously being a gaping wound, a gaunt expression with haunted hands and deceitful eyes, convincing you that everywhere you look your lover resides.

This needs to look at them once more but knowing if you saw them again you would look away.  You go to their favourite bar, shop at their favourite store, wearing their favourite outfit and the perfume they once associated with you. Every day you devote your life to a shadow. Last month felt like the future and now where are you, wallowing in the space between where their arms once were and where you are now. but you’re trying to fill it, so you go to work, you wash your face, you go for a run, you keep running, you wash the floor, you go to work, you cry in the storage cupboard, you cry in the woods, standing in your running trainers, head aflame, lungs burning. Why couldn’t I be enough, if love is all we are then why did you leave?

The now iconic line “you’ve got a nine to five, so I’ll take the night shift’ powerfully epitomises the deliberate decision one makes when wanting to avoid a person, peeling ourselves away from who they used to be by forcing ourselves to explore different routes.

Dacus so beautifully navigates the turmoil and resentment dictated by a premature departure of a lover. Her lyrics are hauntingly honest, full of empowering rage, propelled by a steady drumbeat, like a heart in a state of recovery, complimented by the building up riff of the guitar, like a heart in flight or fight mode, this juxtaposition of peace and war creating a heart wrenching symphony that sadly so many can relate too.

Why do we give each other flowers doomed to die? The wilted rose, once so vibrant and routed, sighing, tired in its glass pedestal, once a token of affection, now drooping. Love is a garden, not a diagonally cut stem, it is affected by the weather so you must shelter it, tend to it, keep it safe, respond to its needs, watch it thrive.

Then finally there is a fall of bitter peace, the relief that you can fill your life with stuff that isn’t them, not to distract yourself but because you want to, you start filling your life with light, eradicating all the shadows.

Poignant and insightful the narrator finds a way to forgive, to leave the space and keep the time and take it all in stride. The track, 5 years old, has a timeless quality that allows you to howl in a shared sense of healing agony, a sound of hope that happiness will prosper.