Album Review: phoneswithchords - Somebody Had to
October of this year will mark the 20th anniversary of the death of Elliott Smith—I often forget how young he was at the time. He was 34.
How many lives had he lived before the autumn of 2003.
Smith’s long history with mental illness and substance use disorder are well documented—following the release of Figure 8 in 2000, up through the end of 2002, Smith descended into a debilitating dependence on both heroin and crack, allegedly often attempting to overdose while using, he regularly spoke with others about suicide, and was paranoid to the point where he was convinced that a white van was following him around Los Angeles while he was beginning to work on the follow up to Figure 8.
At the end of 2002, and into the beginning of 2003, Smith had, much to the surprise of a lot of people, cleaned up—seeking treatment for his substance use disorder, he had also stopped drinking alcohol roughly two months before his passing. There were, of course, half-finished and ultimately scrapped recordings that he had worked on during this period—among them were abandoned sessions he had recorded with his once regular collaborator Jon Brion—who had abruptly put an end to their work (and ultimately their friendship) once Smith’s overwhelming dependency on drugs became too much to navigate.
When Smith inevitably found his way back to making music, it was slow going and experimental at first—opting to spend time working with his then girlfriend’s iMac, creating what he had referred to in interviews before his passing as more or less just “noise.”
Roughly a year after Smith’s death, his estate released From A Basement on The Hill, which is objectively not the album he would have gone on to issue if he had lived, but it is the album that was cobbled together from material that had been recorded and was in some state of completion over three years, with the input and direction from a handful of producers and musicians he regularly worked with during his career.
In some sense, it is noisier, or more dynamic, than both the hushed, lo-fi folk of his albums from Kill Rock Stars, and it is less kaleidoscopic and Beatle-esq than the two major label albums he put out between 1998 and 2000, but it is not as abrasive or experimental as, perhaps, it was initially intended to be, or could have been.
Something that I have written about in the past, and struggled with myself in writing about music, is when music writing, or “music journalists,” are very quick to draw comparisons from one, more well-established artist, to another—an “if you like so and so, you will love this other thing,” kind of situation. I wrote about it at length near the top of the year when I was finding a way to frame my thoughts on the Elliott Green album Everything I Lack, and I get why writers do it—I get why labels, too, often will use the expression “for fans of” as a means of promoting an artist who shares similarities with others who are out there, and maybe have more of an audience already built.
It’s an easy way to describe something to someone without having to be too articulate or detailed.
My problem with it, though, and why I go out of my way to try and avoid it if I can, or at least not rely on it as a means of writing about something, is because I feel like it sells an artist short if you, rather than take the time to point out what is unique or original about them, or what they are contributing to a specific niche or genre, just draw attention to someone, or something, they might sound similar to.
And in continuing to break the fourth wall here, for a few additional moments, if you will humor me, I did knowingly spend the first 600-ish words of this piece talking about Elliott Smith because, in really sitting down with the second full-length release from Arthur Alligood’s project phoneswithcords (stylized like that, all one word, all lower case) the easiest, and maybe a very complimentary way to describe album’s sound is if someone had given Elliott Smith a copy of both The Notwist’s groundbreaking 2002 album, Neon Golden, as well as The Postal Service’s now iconic (and only) LP, Give Up—the album, Somebody Had To, is a surprising and often stark convergence of bleak lyricism through a whispered folk aesthetic with densely layered, often glitchy electronic textures and rhythms.
And it is those latter elements—the dense, glitchy electronic textures, and the convergence they inevitably create within the atmosphere of the album, are relatively new to Alligood, and his work as phoneswithchords. His debut under the moniker, Cut The Kid, was released just a little over a year ago—on it, outside of dabbling with some production effects here and there, it is an extremely lo-fi, hushed affair, firmly working from within the skeletal arranging of Alligood’s spidery, multi-tracked voice, and the acoustic guitar.
Somebody Had To, then, is a giant leap forward for Alligood as a songwriter and performer—there is an exuberance and a confidence that you can hear spilling out of these songs due to the robust nature of their arranging when compared to his previous outing. Even if the musical growth between releases was not surprising enough as it is to those who have perhaps been following the project since it was launched, it is that growth and the incorporation and embracing of these electronic textures—often piled on in layer upon layer—that create an album that, at times, can be overwhelming and a little disorienting when melodies and different tones begin colliding.
It is that disorientation, though, that Alligood uses as a means to reflect, or magnify, his lyricism—in the short press release regarding Somebody Had To, he describes Cut The Kid as a concept album about being a kid and growing up in the rural South. The songs in this collection do serve as a continuation of sorts—regularly feeling like you are sitting in the room with Alligood and his therapist, as he uses a majority of Somebody Had To to reflect, ruminate, process, and as my therapist would say, “unpack” a lot of trauma, or at the very least, difficult memories and uncomfortable feelings, from both the present as well as the past.
*
Everything was perfect ’til it was not
There are only a few moments across Somebody Had To’s 11 tracks where Alligood deviates from the structure he has framed a number of the songs around. It isn’t the idea of “building something up from nothing,” but it’s close, with the tracks here regularly beginning simply and quietly before he begins piling on the layers, turning them into something much more complicated as they grow to a cacophonic breaking point.
And there is, of course, the device, or technique, that is often used within contemporary popular music, of dressing up, or disguising, dark or bleak lyricism within a song where the instrumentation is infectiously assembled—a vehicle to distract you, at first, from the song’s intent.
Across Somebody Had To, Alligood operates from a place of adjacent to that, I suppose—there are moments, and specific melodies, that do really maneuver their way into your head and stay there well after the album has concluded (i.e., the short, twinkling progression that arrives within the opening track, for sure), and his writing throughout does take some very dark turns, but it is apparent that the focus is more on the act of the deliberate build, or build-up, as it were, with the lyrics then falling where they can within the myriad layers as they are introduced—never truly in danger of being pushed so far underneath it all so that they become secondary, but his voice and words do regularly find themselves fighting to hold their space within the noise.
You never have to actually strain yourself in listening, but rather, you just have to pay attention, because you may miss something ultimately harrowing or personally effecting while the song is careening into a torrent of bombast.
The album’s opening and titular track begins quietly, with a sound that is difficult to pinpoint—could it be a progression on a keyboard? Or, more than likely, could it be a quickly plucked guitar, run through a number of effects—distorted and muffled into near oblivion, sounding like it is being broadcast from an AM radio station on another planet? Regardless, it’s a small melody that is carried throughout the entirety of “Somebody Had To,” and it has kind of a bounce, or playfulness to it (this is echoed in the additional melody of a twinkling, charming keyboard sound that comes in over the top of it), but in that playfulness, or kind of borderline rollicking feeling, there is a tinge of melancholy—which is what Alligood then opts to explore the further he takes you into the song.
“It wasn’t what you wanted in your head,” Alligood begins, in a voice that rises just above a whisper. “Every ghost you swore to god was dead,” he continues, pulling the listener head first into the stark world that he has created and spends the rest of the record guiding us through, as he works through the very vivid and unflinching depictions of difficult childhood memories and trauma.
“Your mother had a mind she lost,” Alligood says, matter of factly. “Your daddy went to work—I guess somebody had to.”
After “Somebody Had To”’s second chorus arrives, the song then more or less detonates—and this is the kind of blueprint that Alligood really sticks to on so many of the songs here, perhaps because his incorporation of more elements and textures is still new, or perhaps because it works so well and is often so impactful to create a quote-unquote moment within the song, that why stray from the path of what is proving to be successful?
And when all of these additional elements and sounds come tumbling in—a few more keyboard tones, something low and rumbling like a bass line, and the first of many uses of a skittering, dusty-sounding rhythm, clapped out on a drum machine, the moment that it creates is not ominous—but there is such a robustness to it all, and because it is the first track on the album, it all does kind of come as a surprise that can startle upon the first listen, and even still be a little surprising upon additional times through—a dizzying, disorienting cluster of sounds, with Alligood’s quiet, delicate voice at the center of it all, repeating the titular phrase, “Somebody had to,” creating a hypnotic mantra that swirls around until he begins pulling more and more elements away until the last thing you hear is the original sound the song opened with, quickly echoing into the distance and disappearing.
*
I’m learning to believe in slowly letting go
And it is, of course, more than likely an unintentional reference, or double entendre, found within the title of Somebody Had To’s fourth track, “Slow Release.”
Because with the reference, or nod, that I am thinking of—it isn’t even called a “slow release,” but rather an “extended release,” so I am close, and, perhaps, as I have done in the past, I am reaching, or stretching, for something that might not actually even be there in the first place.
The “extended-release” I am talking about, or trying to draw some kind of reference to here, often abbreviated as “ER” or “XR,” is a medication that is designed to make them last longer in your body—and I am remiss to say it is commonly found at the end of antidepressants, but that is, of course, where I was first introduced to the idea.
Musically, “Slow Release” was among Somebody Had To’s most genuinely interesting because of the continual and often startling juxtapositions that Alligood creates the further along in the song he takes you. It opens with something that continues to skirt along the surface—there’s a tension to the synthesizer tone that he just keeps pulling and pulling until it seems like it is going to snap, and underneath that sound that just seems to keep ricocheting off itself, there is a lower tone coming from a much chintzier sounding keyboard.
Shortly after passing the 60-second mark, and without breaking the kind of rhythmless, free-floating sounds that have been swirling around him, Alligood brings in a quiet, though rather tightly plucked, sparse acoustic guitar, with some very skeletal percussive elements—all of these elements colliding like this, or at least attempting to occupy the same space, do not create something as disorienting or dissonant as one might anticipate, though it is, at first, a little difficult to keep all of the layers, and elements, separate, and still pay close attention to Alligood’s fragile voice, and the lyrics he’s softly singing.
And it is within 30 seconds of these other elements being introduced that the song’s instrumentation does take a turn for the dramatic, as a stirring string accompaniment comes sweeping through, and an electronically infused bass drum kick rumbles through, which introduces yet another musical shift, where, as “Slow Release” continues, there is such a sense of tension, and everything seems more urgent and heightened.
“Always had a feeling there was more below the surface,” Alligood reflects near the beginning of the song. “Rooms long been locked—told myself you don’t go in there, but why not?”
Lyrically, “Slow Release” is perhaps one of the more intense and inherently personal songs on Somebody Had To—it is also, the more it builds momentum, one of the few places where Alligood becomes audibly angry, or distraught—with a surprising vitriol directed at an off-stage character the longer he spends unpacking the things that he had previously stuffed deep down within himself.
“If I remember it all, would it cover up or right these wrongs to know what I buried—secretly carried for so long?,” he asks.
The vitriol, and unprocessed anger, comes once the song’s arranging begins to build to that place of immediacy, with Alligood’s voice, not so much buried in the layers upon layers of the song, but finding their place tucked in tightly among the chaos—like the fury you work yourself up into when you have to advocate for yourself, or perhaps become confrontation. In this case, it is heavily implied that it is a member of Alligood’s family.
“The Christmas after I moved out, said all I wanted was a letter, but you sent me a fucking sweater,” he recalls in one of the very few moments of humor, albeit quite dark, found on the record. “Couldn’t take the time to even find the words—your silence hurt. I think I thought you’d eventually admit, now you say your therapist said we drove you to it…that’s bullshit.”
And within these difficult memories, and feelings, and within the attempt to process them, there is less of a resolution, and, if anything, more of a small glimpse, even within all of the cacophony and anguish, of optimism, and an exhausted resignation. “I’m learning to believe in slowly letting go,” Alligood confesses as the song reaches its conclusion. “I look in the mirror and see a person you will never know. Here I am—who I’ve always been.”
Arriving immediately after “Slow Release” is “The Ammo,” which opens with 30 seconds of reserved, gentle, and very folk-leaning plucks of the acoustic guitar—so hushed and delicate that the kind of hypnotic work on the strings would not sound out of place on an album like Iron and Wine’s debut from upwards of two decades ago. And after the first verse has finished, roughly another 30 seconds in—again, Alligood continues to find ways throughout to methodically build layer upon layer within nearly every track—a quiet, mildly distorted, twinkling melody comes in. It’s charming, yes, but there is something extraordinarily bittersweet about both the tone of the keyboard itself, and the way the notes are falling, and even the notes themselves—a kind of wistfulness that is a convergence of something terrible but beautiful.
That quiet, and restraint, though, fades away quickly with the more layers that arrive—oscillating and blippy synth sounds begin rippling through, coursing underneath the distended, heavier strums of a crunchy electric guitar, which is then joined by a clattering, kind of shuffling percussive sequence from a drum machine.
And, of course, the growth and eventual near oppressive or certainly overwhelming nature of “The Ammo”’s arranging makes sense, especially with the key lyric to the song that Alligood repeats while things spiral around him, but it is the folksy instrumentation near the beginning of the song that is used as a means of offsetting how self-effacing his writing is here.
“Write my worth in permanent ink: all my failures—every mistake,” he begins in a voice that sounds so delicate, it might be on the verge of breaking at any moment. “Here’s all the ammo you’ll ever need. I’m ready for the takedown—the canceling of my existence.”
And it does become harder—perhaps intentionally so—to make out Alligood’s voice, even though the whisper, as the song because to build and pulsate toward its peak, is long gone, and it is one of the few places on Somebody Had To where he does seem like he is holding back from shouting, before the final moments arrive, what I can hear him say is, and maybe this is a small reprieve of some kind from the continual self-reflection and processing that occurs throughout, but there is a point where he says, “It took a while to know who I am,” before arriving at the message at the center of the song, and what is seemingly one of the themes from his depiction of fumbling through the journey of the self: “I fucked up, but I’m no fuck up.”
*
For a majority of my life, I have been an only child. I say this—described in this specific way which does, of course, carry a few vague implications—because there was a short period of time in the mid-1990s when, after my parents divorced, and my mother remarried, that I had a handful of step-siblings.
The man she was married to (albeit for less than two years) was around 20 years older—a widower with five adult children, the youngest of which was turning 21 roughly around the time I was turning 13.
Because they were all older, and had their own lives—the youngest, David, was heading into his final year in college around this time—I did not see them that often, but there were three of the five who were, specifically, incredibly kind and patience to this teenage younger step-sibling they had suddenly inherited.
And there is the idea that the older sibling—the one who discovers, or experiences something first, will then introduce the younger sibling to that. I think, in a number of cases, or at least with the friends I had in junior high and high school, who all had siblings that were two or three years older, it was with music—my friend Peter was regularly turned onto things by his older brother John.
It was John who drove Peter, and a few others from our grade, to concerts before any of us had turned 16 and gotten our licenses.
David and I never went to concerts—there was really no opportunity for that during the time we were step-siblings. He did take me to the Music Box Theatre in Chicago during the summer of 1996 to see a screening of the Wallace and Gromit short, “The Wrong Trousers,” and he did, across the drive back from Chicago to our hometown of Freeport, Illinois, introduce me to Bob Mould’s post-Husker Du band, Sugar.
The day after I turned 16, I started working at a local drug store, and after about two months, on a Friday night, I was paired to work with Dominick—he was about four or five years older than I was, and honestly, until the night I had been told to work alongside him, I had been a little intimidated by him, and we had little, if any, exchanges in passing prior to that.
Dom had an interest, or a background, in visual art and design—he was taking classes at the community college in Freeport before, in the fall of 2000, transferring to a larger state university, and regardless of how mischievous, or difficult to work with he may have been perceived as by our boss, I quickly found Dom to be fiercely intelligent and intense; well-intended and genuinely interesting to talk with—specifically about music and films.
There were no concerts to speak of in the rural Illinois town we lived in at the time—in the fall of 2000, during my senior year in high school, he and I, along with another person we worked with at the drugstore, Andrew, drove to Milwaukee to see Incubus and the Deftones perform—what I would go on to commonly refer to as my first “real concert” for a number of years because I was, during my teens and into my early 20s, embarrassed to say I had been to a New Kids on The Block concert in the second grade.
And the reason that I have brought these short anecdotes about David, my one-time step-brother, and Dominick, at one time a co-worker, into this, is because, on Somebody Had To, there is a dazzling, though short, reprieve from the inherently bleak, or downcast songwriting—it arrives early on in the album in the song “Darren,” where Alligood, through an upbeat, whimsical, shimmering arrangement, recalls his years as a teenage punk, and his music and concert based acquaintanceship with the titular character.
His vivid description of Darren in the song isn’t exactly flattering, but it isn’t exactly malicious either—if anything, it is, like a lot of the feelings processed on the record, Alligood returning to his formative years, revisiting experiences or ruminating on memories with the lens of what he knows, and who he is now.
“Wore a studded belt and wallet chain,” Alligood sings in the second verse when he paints a portrait of Darren. “When his folks split up, he tried to hide the pain—talking real, real big, but we knew he was full of shit. Still, he wasn’t cruel like the jocks and jackasses at school.”
“Despite all the facts,” he continues. ‘We thought he was so cool.”
Then, in the chorus, a similar sentiment—“You could tell that people thought he was lame. But he had a car, and he knew our names.”
The depiction of teenage angst and being taken under the wing of someone just a few years older, and the kind of youthful admiration you have toward this person who has taken an interest in you through something shared—in this case, going to punk shows—is one thing, but it is Alligood’s melancholic reflection on how quickly his friendship with Darren ultimately faded which is quite beautiful in how it is articulated in the bridge.
“You know, sometimes with fast friends,” he reflects. “They fall away just as quick. You rack your brain, but you can’t recall. Nothing happened, nothing at all. It’s like you woke up, and you’ve moved on. You can barely remember your favorite song,” Alligood continues. “You get older, and it comes on, and you remember when….”
Musically, I stop short of calling “Darren” a “triumphant” sounding song in the way the elements are all piled together, but it is one of the few where things are much brighter, and jubilant in tone—and as he begins winding things down with one final verse, Alligood does ultimately find a tenderness, or fondness, in the memories he’s opted to revisit. “Stole all your stubborn confidence from a punk rock poser college kid who talked a lot, but he was my friend,” he sings quietly as the many layers begin fading away, leaving just a ramshackle-sounding drum machine rhythm and warbled melody. “He was my friend.”
*
Like a lot of new music, or at least artists that I am not already familiar with, I found out about Alligood’s work as phoneswithchords through Twitter—a retweet, about Somebody Had To, from Curtis Reeves Jr, whom I have, at least within the last six months (maybe even longer) heard about a lot of “new to me” artists through. At the time, when I saw Reeves initially hyping up the album, only one single had been released—“Somebody Get Me To Dance,” the penultimate track on Somebody Had To.
What I was most impressed with about the song, and what made me genuinely interested in sitting with the rest of the album, was the meticulous attention to detail in the way Alligood works with the layers as he brings them in. He, of course, in other places on the record, introduces them nearly one at a time, bringing each one in slowly and methodically. On “Somebody Get Me To Dance,” there are at least three right from the very beginning, and it was the way those individual elements tumbled together in a way that was so compelling that kept me listening.
It was the way those individual elements tumbled together in a way that reminded me of the chopped up, glitchy opening to the German electro-indie rock band The Notwist’s 2002 LP, Neon Golden—arguably the band’s defining moment in their lengthy career; it reminded me of the pulsating, surging drum machine beat that is, then, joined by gentle plucks of a guitar that sounds like a banjo but it really isn’t, in the song “Fighting On The Stairs,” from the Irish band The Frames’ 2001 record, For The Birds.
It’s the convergence of a more organic sound, or instrument, with something inherently not, and in the space where they meet, there is the circling, or pushing and pulling, where the aesthetics figure out how to work together.
“Somebody Get Me To Dance” begins with a quiet, dusty sounding, cymbal heavy drum machine beat, before three different guitar tracks come in—one is plucked in such a way that it, too, sounds like banjo, and creates a jaunty kind of melody that is offset by lower strings being played and kind of bent, almost, in a way that creates an echoing effect between both tracks, along with singularly strummed chords from a crunchy, muffled electric guitar cut through all of these other elements.
And, like the choice in arranging and instrumentation on “Darren,” “Somebody Get Me To Dance” is one of the other songs on Somebody Had To that is a lot less heavy, or dark, in its tonality—the kind of playful rhythm does literally beckon you to dance along to it as the elements skitter and shuffle around you. The playful way it sounds is, of course, a means of distraction from Alligood’s lyricism here. Certainly not one of the bleakest of this set, he does not spend the song working through unprocessed childhood trauma, but it is the place where he is the most self-deprecating and least gracious toward himself.
“All this time, every little stubborn second leaving me low,” he begins in the first verse. “Far behind my peers. I’ve had the chance, but I don’t ever take it. I’ve stuck around this Sorrowtown for what? I’m still waiting.”
The chorus is just two lines: “Somebody, give me a chance. Somebody, get me to dance,” and Alligood’s voice, as he repeats them, does not change in its cadence, but there is a kind of exhausted urgency and desperation to it—sentiments that are woven tightly and further into the fabric of the song, but once you catch a glimpse of them, even with the sense of whimsy “Somebody Get Me To Dance” is built up around, that exhausted urgency and desperation is, in fact, all you can think about.
*
Somebody Had To is not a hopeless album, but given the larger themes explored across its 12 songs, it certainly is not entirely a hopeful album either—more than anything, it is a very honest reflection and exploration of specific lived experiences and of challenges within the human condition.
Some of the darkest, or at least for me, more difficult lyrics on Somebody Had To, because they resonate so deeply, are in the songs where Alligood spends his time with what he believes to be his own shortcomings, or how others might consider him difficult to love, and when he is open about his mental health and addresses it head-on.
Tucked within the final third of Somebody Had To, “You’re Not Buying It” opens with a squall of harsh guitar feedback before allowing other instruments, as well as a different kind of affect, to come floating into the world of the song.
“You know how dark—how dark I can get,” Alligood assures both an off-stage individual he’s addressing, near the top of the song, as well as us as listeners. “A night with no stars…you’ve come to expect.”
There is a lot to unpack, both in terms of Alligood’s writing, and the way the layers are stacked and then slowly pulled away on “You’re Not Buying It.” The elements that are introduced early on—the ripples of feedback and the jittery, slightly tinny-sounding beat are two things that play large roles in the structure of the song from the moment it begins, but there is both an additional drum pattern that arrives once the song reaches that point of lift-off to really emphasis what is happening and the direction things are heading in, and there is also the myriad synthesizer tones that come in and out—many of them, as you might anticipate based on the other keyboard sounds found throughout Somebody Had To, are antiquated, which does ultimately take a little of the edge, or severity away from the song.
Within the self-effacing reflections here, there is an unexpected harshness that comes off at times, from Alligood and toward whoever this unnamed character is within the world of the song. “I cut you down to size, down to the quick,” he says with a frankness, before seemingly trying to backpedal. “Swear to you I’ve changed, but you’re not buying it.”
Regardless, though, of the seemingly cruel tone the song takes at that moment, it is also in “You’re Not Buying It” where Alligood utters one of the most poignant observations of the entire record: “They say that no one gets older without some kind of baggage to carry around. I’m tired of standing on these of stages of grief,” he sings while the music swirls, writhes, and builds behind him. “Maybe pain is all we get—there is no relief.”
*
Turns out they call it depression—you were the first one to mention I might need to talk with someone…
In the press materials for Somebody Had To, it is referred to as “the elephant in the room,” and I suppose that is accurate because it is something large, and daunting, and something that often should be, or could be, talked about, but it is something that people rarely want to, or are even equipped or prepared to discuss.
My paternal grandfather died by suicide in 1998—I was a teenager then, and old enough to have understood the “how” but maybe not old enough to really have a good grasp on the “why,” but his death was, and perhaps still is, a dark secret on my father’s side of the family.
It wasn’t until twenty years later, when I read about his death—the information was included as part of a haphazardly assembled family history a relative had sent to me. In it, the “why” and the “how” of his death are more or less a paraphrasing of whatever really did occur—he had been involved in an accident at some point in his life, and the injuries sustained in that, as well as the physical demands of his line of work, had apparently made it so he was in constant physical pain.
“Depression set in,” the information my father’s sister wrote. “And sadly, he took his own life.”
When I was still regularly writing short, personal essays for outlets other than myself, I had written about my paternal grandfather’s suicide—not at length, but within the larger context of a piece about mental health.
I don’t really write too many personal essays anymore—it isn’t for lack of ideas that I feel could be developed into something that might be worth reading, but rather it is, at least in part, because I no longer have outlets for them outside of myself.
But it is also because, even if I have ideas that I feel could be developed, I found that I have lost the ability to balance myself between writing about music, and writing about something else entirely.
It’s not that the writing about music comes any “easier,” or takes less time. It is just what I often find myself doing.
There are other stories worth telling, and maybe even worth reading, but I find I quickly talk myself out of focusing on them.
I don’t really write too many personal essays anymore—and what I have written, and been able to complete, have often been for submission to be published in various literary magazines or journals.
And what I have written—the last thing I wrote, and submitted off into the ether with a blind hope, mined bits and pieces of things about my paternal grandfather’s death by suicide, and about the elephant in the room.
It isn’t that nobody wants to talk about suicide, or suicidal ideation—well, maybe there are some people who simply do not, but what I think, or at least have found, is that it is something that people are rarely equipped or prepared to discuss.
Based on the title, “Sadder Than Before” is the song that is about the elephant in the room—Somebody Had To’s centerpiece that unfolds over a briskly paced, stompy kind of beat, with a chugging, quiet rhythm and melody that eventually take their place among the warm, vintage-sounding, single note synthesizer tones that quiver through it all.
“I took all the pills I had,” Alligood confesses during the song’s chorus. “Woke up feeling so mad about it. Couldn’t even kill myself—left me feeling even sadder than before.”
And the thing about “Sadder Than Before” is that, certainly with the title, and certainly with the subject matter Alligood speaks rather candidly about, it could be one of the darkest, or most uncomfortable to face moments on Somebody Had To, and musically, he does put for the effort with the instrumentation to try and offset the seriousness, though it does not distract as much as the other contrasts created on the record end up doing. But I think the most intelligent, and then it ends up being the most sentimental thing, that he does on this song is tries to redirect that darkness into small slivers of something good, from someone supportive.
“You’re the only one I trust to talk me through, down off the ledge,” he sings in the second verse. “When I’m caught in the cage, lost in my head, sooner or later, I remember what you said.”
And I think about a conversation I had, within recent memory, with my friend Alyssa, and something she said to me that I don’t think I’ll ever forget, or if she really knows how important it was—“I need you to remain alive for forever.”
Following the moment where “Sadder Than Before” grows to a point of bombast through both the driving, yet reserved, rhythm and the layers upon layers of synthesizer bursts, Alligood arrives at the bridge, which is, without a doubt, the most honest and heartfelt moment of reflection on the record. “Turns out they call it depression,” he sings gently. “You were the first one to mention I might need to talk with someone. I memorized your words and speak them out loud sometimes,” he continues, as the instrumentation that had temporarily dropped away to emphasize the gravity of this moment comes back in. “It helps me to free my mind. You said I was loved—I think you were right.”
I need you to remain alive for forever.
I think you were right.
*
Somebody Had To ends with a hushed epilogue of sorts—one that is maybe a little more musically similar to the sparse, lo-fi beginnings of Alligood’s work as phoneswithchords from his debut under the moniker last year. The question he asks on “All Over” is not an easy one, and like a lot of the questions he asks both of himself, and others, on the album, there is little, if any, resolution.
“I ask myself, ‘Why am I here and not somewhere else,’” he sings as a chorus of sorts while distorted, ramshackle guitar string strums tumble around in the background.
And, yes, there are few answers—easy, or otherwise, or much resolve in the tension found within what Alligood sets out to work through on Somebody Had To. But the thing is that there doesn’t always have to be an answer, or a resolution—the confrontation of trauma and difficult memories, and the asking of these questions, both of others and of himself, and just sitting in those uncomfortable feelings is enough sometimes, although it doesn’t always feel like it.
We sit in the discomfort. We acknowledge that it is, in fact, uncomfortable for us. And then we try to find a way to not move past it, but rather, just keep moving as best we can in the moment.
On Somebody Had To, Alligood bridges two different sonic ends of “lo-fi” music, and in writing with a surprising and, at times, unflinching frankness, he creates an album that extends a welcomed grace to both himself, and to us as we listen.
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