Tracks
WHY? & Themselves: "Canada"
Single (2009)
By Conrad Amenta | 31 August 2009
It’s hard not to hear “You’re showing your pinkest parts in my absence” and not think of Dose One’s self-described hell of returning home from a tour to find his partner had moved on. And yet there’s so much gentleness at play throughout “Canada” that it deftly sidesteps the easy anger (which doesn’t seem at all easy at the time, I’m sure) that that kind of situation evokes. It’s a rarer moment than you’d expect from such a gifted lyricist: clarity, vulnerability, nakedness, it’s Dose’s pink parts that are in fact on display. Easily one of the year’s most mellifluous and intricately textured songs, the ease with which these collaborators ease the four-and-a-half minute, two-act play into movement is stunning. In a song with about separation, freezing waters, isolation, demons, loneliness, “Canada” is also testament to what’s possible when former cLOUDDEAD members Yoni Wolf and Dose One get together. This is mature, steady, remarkable stuff from natural poets.