“Til the ground pulls you down / To the dirt I knew we’d always come back to”
For an album with a title straight from the marine depths of “Moby Dick,” the latest pre-released single from “Death in the Business of Whaling,” “Dirt,” is surprisingly down to earth.
The introduction to “Dirt” has a soft and soothing fingerstyle guitar, as Searows steps into a monochrome canvas in the accompanying video. In the video, notes ripple over wispy gauze curtains and coral cutouts, visually caught between dimensions, foreign and familiar all at once. In underarticulated words, the first lyrics drift out, carrying a tired acceptance that one cannot help but sink into.
In contrast with the percussion-backed steadiness of the album’s second pre-release, “Photograph of a Cyclone,” “Dirt” is limp, wilted and boneless: trapped in lyrics about overgrown grass, wolves closing in and a predestined return to the dirt. Lacking rises or falls, the song is an acceptance in the face of nature’s inevitable cycles, a ship on a stagnant sea that accepted its fate long ago.
The video depicts hazy smoke, flowing gauze, flickering flames and shadows of hands. Constant movement fades into stillness, when a singing mouth becomes a blank, unblinking face, then a lifeless 2-dimensional landscape, and lit candles turn to dripping wax, eventually dying into an extinguished wick.
Through “Dirt,” Searows conveys an uncomfortable yet necessary recognition of impermanence, a recognition that most have already acknowledged or will eventually need to face. He approaches the topic with a gentle firmness, creating a space to linger, wallow and come to terms with an unavoidably ephemeral world.
