On “Across the Room,” the latest single from Brooklyn four-piece Ok Cowgirl, we’re sitting in the passenger seat as vocalist Leah Lavigne drifts into memories of a dissolved relationship. “Double take at a stop sign / I was driving down a pretty street,” she sings, her voice weighted with curiosity. “Only followed for a few blocks before I felt like a creep,” she reveals. We’ve happened upon her ex and the ache for a lost future overtakes for only a moment. It’s never really about seeing that individual and needing them, but the onslaught of emotions attached to intimate moments that one can’t get back; it’s a realization that everything’s changed, and change can be terrifying.
“With every relationship’s end there is the loss of what was, and the loss of what never got to be,” Lavigne says of the track. “I find that running into an ex isn’t always tough because I miss the person; often it’s tough because I miss the future I dreamed up that I know will never get to be. Grieving lost closeness to a person is one thing, but letting go of a dream is its own type of heartbreak.”
“Across the Room” transitions with jumpy guitars and rumbling bass into a sashaying kind of waltz as Lavigne gets lost in her memories and new distance between an old lover. “Now I only see you in passing,” she sings. Her voice floats and winds across the track, veering close to yodel territory in parts, like a lonely piece of confetti soaring and unable to find the ground. “In my experience, heartbreak does not dissipate with time. Feelings never completely resolve; they may get quieter, but you never know when they’ll grow loud again,” she says.
Hear “Across the Room” below.
