O’Brother – “Complicated End Times”

When I hear this absolute scorcher from O’Brother, a lot of thoughts race through my mind.  I feel the urgency of those opening electric riffs; all gnarly, distorted, and ugly.  I bask in the shadow of mystery cast by the more gently plucked strings, and Merrit’s vocals – wispy yet somehow completely in charge.  Then, I feel the explosiveness of the chorus – acute, compelling…not explicitly angry, although that clearly boils just beneath what’s audible.  It’s restrained.  The whole song feels like a city of people trying to brace their walls before they come pummeling inward, from some unidentified but clearly menacing external force of nature.   “Complicated End Times” might just be the most ominous alt-rock track I’ve ever heard.

Lyrically, it’s vague and untelling.  Merrit sings in abstract phrases, like “But you don’t know a thing about me, you want to snuff the fire out…” and “You’ll see I’ll be the paradigm.”  It could just as easily be a cryptic breakup song as one about the end of the world as we know it; there’s such a wide spectrum of interpretations.  The imprecise nature of the words are a perfect marriage for what O’Brother has constructed – a world, either personal or literal, that is falling apart.  The way the band perfected the soft-to-loud formula recalls Fire-era Thrice, although nothing there comes even remotely close to the intensity that this whole song emits – at a fever pitch – through every crack and crevice in its battered and weathered exterior.

It’s the musical reflection of the cover art as well.  You have this perfect shape, a metaphor for order and law.  Then, exploding out of its heart comes this swirling black hole, sucking matter into its endless nothing with a force that seems to expand exponentially.  “Complicated End Times” is sheer grit and courage, the futile efforts of a man fighting against a force that he knows deep down he cannot stop.  You can hear the desperation in his voice when he sings with the utmost determination, “I just need a little time…” For a song that in essence only has two modes, and alternates between them, “Complicated End Times” feels infinite.  It has its own aura, this atmosphere that descends into bleakness without ever feeling hopeless.

Read more from this decade at my homepage for Sowing’s Songs of the Decade.

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