Scene and Heard – CCXVI : The Drink That Kills Me – Willodean

Music and alcohol have always been in a relationship; from the inspiring to the fatal they are both connected in an on going dance. Music has long celebrated and cursed the liquid in equal measure and here Willodean take a more reflective approach to the subject. This modern take on the barroom serenade is refreshingly honest and accepting of the inevitable, a Tom Waits ballad but with a more accessible and commercially viable vibe.

The piano frames the vocals and a meandering violin acts like a second harmony voice but the power of the song comes from the stark subject matter and the space in the song which allows the realisations to hang heavy in the air. Neither a glorification nor a dismissal of the hooch and the hard stuff, more an acknowledgement that, in the western world at least, creativity and the barroom are more often than not intrinsically linked and rarely has this intertwined conflict been better or more poetically put into song.