19. Slaughter Beach, Dog - “Your Cat”
There are plenty of breakup songs out there. In fact, I would venture to say that around about 50% of songs in existence deal with lost or unrealized love in one way or another – and that’s probably a highly conservative number at that. However, the majority of breakup songs get it wrong. So many are overly melodramatic and in a sense formulaic, focusing on the past and the loss and the feeling of soul-crushing injustice, despite very few of us actually feeling such things. And yet, we as fragile humans repeatedly seek refuge in the concrete and cathartic hyperbole of such songs, even though such feelings are far from a natural conclusion, but rather a commercialized ideal of lost love that those floundering about latch upon and then claim as their own.
True heartbreak is chaotic. It’s having the anchor cut and being cast about every which way, unsure of yourself, your thoughts, and your emotions. It’s reality altering, and in doing so, slips the participant out of phase, almost as if there simultaneously spanning alternate realities and dimensions, doing their best to adjust to and accept the one in which they’ve suddenly been cast.
This jam captures that feeling by assuming the feeling. It follows the wanderings of a mind without focus, of a mind that’s desperately trying to pay attention to anything but the problem at hand. His mind is doing everything it can – seeking refuge in the absurd, lashing out at the minutiae of every emotion but love, and avoiding silence and peace at all costs. It’s a soul perpetually looking for a fight or an escape – anything but the actual present that’s perpetually haunting it and slowly creeping in to suffocate its existence. However, as we all know, the result is inevitable. It’s almost as if all of his effort has the opposite effect, slowly breaking him down, until in the end, despite all of the resistance, all he can hope for is to die and come back as her cat. It’s an acknowledgement that’s simultaneously loving, sacrificial, beautiful, humorous, and demeaning. Unlike so many other songs, it’s genuine and relatable, and yet soul-crushing all the same.
