Raise your hand if you’re the kind of person that has spent so much time building walls around themselves that they feel perfectly comfortable spending most of their time alone talking to characters on a competition reality show who can’t hear you, but that isn’t going to stop you from doing it? slowly raises hand Now, imagine that somebody took the time to knock down one of those walls, sneak in, and catch a glimpse of the version of yourself that you’ve spent a lifetime barricading just in time for your self-destructive tendencies to double down and push them away. You play it off fine — you’re good, this is nothing new for you, not at all. It’s another day in paradise, right?
Wrong. It could be any number of small triggers that send you spiraling into a pit of “Oh my god, I miss them. I can’t believe I miss them.” It’s something guttural, like the last of the butterflies you used to feel when you looked at them has died, and you’d do anything to get them back. Sound familiar? Then, boy howdy, am I excited to share this new No Better song with you today.
“Still” is the first single to come from their debut album It Felt Like Glass outside of the surprise release of both “Poise & Light” and, “My Love Says Always,” and it cuts right to the thick of things. Vocalist Josh Oliver feels at home in the kind of anguish that comes from a hard lesson learned, and that’s clear in his delivery of the lyrics, “Stare at your picture I pinned up on my wall and I wonder if you wonder about me, still, at all? I’ve been doing fine, yeah, I’ve been doing alright, but god I miss you here when things get quiet.” It’s a song about heartbreak that isn’t too loud; it’s not some wrought and overbearing anthem of melancholia. When asked about the track, Oliver says: “‘Still’ is about swallowing your pride and admitting it when you miss someone. It’s about being vulnerable and saying I’m sorry. And, more than anything, it’s about accepting every aspect of your partner’s personhood and hoping they’ll forgive you for your own pitfalls.”
Listen below.
It Felt Like Glass is out July 27th on No Sleep Records and can be pre-ordered here.