2020 might be over, but that means the winter is just about to settle in properly. It’s cold, it’s dark, and—let’s be honest—while the last year is now a memory, it’s one that’s going to stick deep inside our souls for a long time. Thankfully, there’s always music to help escape from the torments and the cold—which is exactly what Los Angeles band The Drives offer with “The Comedown.”
That doesn’t mean it’s a particularly optimistic song, however, and given its title that’s not surprising. Musically, it’s certainly upbeat and hopeful—the chugging melody and frontman Andrew Levin’s vocals are reminiscent of early Strokes, full of emotion and nostalgia that’s delivered with casual indifference. But lean deep into the song and its lyrics and you realize that it’s driven by the absence and a hollow that fills inside you after losing someone—or something—that was an important part of your life for a long time.
Whether it’s losing love or a loved one, or just being stuck in the rut that 2020 shoved so many us into, “The Comedown” offers a little optimism even as it acknowledges the hurt: “And I’ll take the books I never read / And you take the cards / I wrote them all for you,” Levin sings. It drives forward toward something else without descending into any cliched, self-help tropes that the grass is always greener. Rather, the song acknowledges that it’s going to be a rocky road: “When I’m pushing through the water / Still feels like I’m coming down.” Yet neither does it give up or in entirely. “I still see us / Somewhere / In a different room,” opines Levin hopefully, the past and future colliding as the present veers out of view for at least the time being.
Hear the track below.
