I am being haunted by breakup tracks, but I’m not sure what else I expected. All music is about love and loss in one way or another. “But not all music is about relationships specifically!” No, it’s not, but it is always about love. Love of a person, a place, a passion, a memory. Loss of a boyfriend or lost youth, or a beloved pet. Like it or not, love is the experience that touches us most profoundly. Everything can be distilled down to love. And breakups often feel just as painful as a death, you probably won’t be seeing this person anymore after all.
Steele FC’s “Cherry” ruminates on the profound emptiness that follows a breakup. The music is mellow, but also purposefully repetitive.The vocalist comes across as a bit numb; as he goes about his days he imagines the voice of his ex. This voice is portrayed by French musician Soko. “Mon Amour,” she calls him, “I’m always alone,” he responds in kind. It is an attractive form of sadness, these poetic, bilingual beautiful people and maybe in a different mood that would bother me, but on a golden lit morning with sage burning on my desk, I find I don’t mind so much. There is a time and place for the ugly side of mourning, and then there is a time when you just want to sink into the poetic realism of a beautiful breakup.