At A Bar Long After the Time You Should Have Gone Home
- francescagelet
- Feb 4
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 21
A moody stumble through the stages of grief over the course of one, booze-fueled night, this vibe is genre-spanning and full of ups and downs. Everyone does heartbreak well, after all. If you can imagine that each song is a stop on a long bar crawl, and each bar room is a different angle on why our hero is there – and why they are drinking.
The vibe kicks off with the Beastie Boys’ ‘Brass Monkey.’ Everything about this song is aggressive, from the horns to the beats to the vocals, without boiling over into violence. It’s youthful and fundamentally masculine aggression. The tone is fun, frantic, and arrogant. As they say, “I drink brass monkey and I rock well.” There’s not even a hint of pain or foreshadowing here. After all, you don’t start a night thinking you’ll end in despair.
‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ by Jet is the second track, and here the party keeps on going. While our hero still may be surrounded by friends and fun, his attentions turn to a girl – of course. Musically, this song is full of upbeat tambourine and drums, punctuated by bursts of energy and rasping, powerful, arrogant vocals. The night is young and the party is still going…for now.
‘Bad Habits’ by The Last Shadow Puppets has an explosive beginning and similar instrumentals as the previous track, leading you to believe momentarily that the party will continue, but sharp string accompaniment provides an ominously frantic tonal shift. There’s still an arrogance in this song, but it’s underpinned by an urgency, a kind of brutal fixation, and twisted imagery. Perhaps we haven’t made it to midnight yet, but we are on our way there.
The anchor track here pushes the vibe into blues territory. In ‘Texas Flood,’ Stevie Ray Vaughan’s mastery of the guitar draws out angst and misery against the backdrop of consistent, slow base and percussion. Narratively, Vaughan laments his predicament – he can’t reach his baby. All of the frantic, fixated energy that provided armor to our hero in the previous three tracks is laid bare by emotion here.
Attention turns to drinking as a solution for heartache, rather than fuel for a party, in Midland’s classically country ballad, ‘Drinkin’ Problem,’ which is complete with layered electric, acoustic, and slide guitar and an earthy vocal twang reminiscent of Conway Twitty and Alan Jackson. Incidentally, this makes a great two-stepping song.
‘Cornerstone,’ by Arctic Monkeys comes in with a compellingly sad indie pop rock shift. Our hero has left the bar, but only temporarily, and all of his thoughts are consumed by the girl. There is a fixation on her to the point that he is desperate to see her everywhere he goes. If you’ve ever been consumed by love for someone who has left you, but you still have to occupy the same space as them, you know how this feels. Once, in a spate of heartbreak, I learned that I would be flying out of the same airport and to the same destination as my former lover. I hoped to see him at the gate, but he wasn’t there, so when the airline called for volunteers to bump their seat to a later flight in exchange for a voucher, I accepted, hoping again that I would see him. He didn’t show, and I waited in the airport for hours. I never used the voucher either. This song captures that insanity and turns it into something earnest and relatable.
In not finding her, a depressive mood descends on our hero represented through ‘Scumbag,’ by Peace. He’s back in the bar, this time with a psychedelic and somewhat playful musical backdrop we can define as “alt rock.” Angsty vocals and multiple guitar solos build to an agonizing climax. “I’m so good for you,” the hero says over and over, trying as much to convince himself as he is us. We might have been waiting for midnight, but it’s passed us by now.
‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High,’ by Arctic Monkeys comes in moody and dark with staccato base and guitar, and lilting back-up vocals. The addition of this song breaks one of the playlist rules (only one song per artist), but sometimes rules need to be broken. Alex Turner laments that, “the mirror’s image tells me it’s home time, but I’m not finished ‘cuz you’re not by my side.” We’ve reached the point in the night where dark, wet pavement turns into puddles of light by reflecting dingy yellowed streetlamps. Our hero is stumbling along, alone while, “it’s 3 in the morning and I’m trying to change your mind,” and we get a glimpse into why the girl left him in the first place.
Getting no answer from the girl, and with his searching coming up empty, our hero truly drops into despair with ‘Loved So Little,’ by Matt Berninger. The song is defined by wistful strings, anguished harmonica, light percussion, and deep emotional vocals. The blame game has started, and our hero is looking everywhere but his own actions.
In ‘Must Be the Whiskey,’ slide guitar slides us right into a gritty set of vocals courtesy of Cody Jinks. At this point, our hero is a dude who has seen some things, but he’s still trying desperately to protect himself from his pain and his own actions. Rather than blaming a lack of love, he’s blaming the whiskey this time. The anguish is clear here as Jinks laments, “it’s like my head is too afraid to tell my heart what it’s done.” It might still be dark in our hero’s night, but we are hurtling toward dawn.
Close to the end of the night, the vibe shifts from country back to an indie alt rock situation with ‘Trouble’ by Cage the Elephant. Our hero is still playing the blame game, and this time trouble is the culprit. Defined by the line, “I said it was love and I did it for love, didn’t do it for you,” this song explores a needling sense of regret and despair tinged with acceptance.
It is finally, mercifully, the end of the night or the beginning of the morning, depending on which way you look at it. In ‘Counting Sheep,’ Shakey Graves screams into the ether, “tonight I got nothin’ on my mind but you.” Dreamy, listless, and exhausted, our hero finally reaches the acceptance of his circumstances that he’s been stumbling toward all night. This song’s anguished vocals, tambourine, and delicate electric guitar carry him away. Has he learned anything? Maybe. Will he do it all again as soon as this hangover wears off? Probably.
Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats offer a tonal palate cleanser in the bonus track, ‘S.O.B.’ It’s an upbeat take on addiction, defined by pain, desperation, and acceptance. The sentiments of a good night turned sour wrapped in one track, no?
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