Song of the Day: Okkervil River - "Love to a Monster"

"Love to a Monster" from the Austin, TX quartet's fifth EP Overboard and Down, is a woozy waltz driven by mandolin and malice.

Songwriter/frontman Will Sheff sets the scene: "I wouldn't be able to bear the way you cannot love me/It's much easier of me to make a monster out of you"...and then spends the rest of the tune doing just that. Using the natural response to breakup (namely, "Why don't you just fuck off?") as an emotional starting point, we then proceed into darker, more menacing territory: "I hope your new man thinks of me when he sees what a number I did on you." Dude won't be happy until he knows she's unhappy. It's basically the polar opposite of Dylan's fare-thee-well "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right".

Like a perpetual pinball, the song's tone caroms around the different stages of coping with heartbreak, bouncing from anger to depression to acceptance and back to depression, then maybe some more anger. By the time Sheff mutters a trumpet solo-invoking "C'mon, boys" to his band, you almost wish he'd mercifully end it all. Instead, he shouts out Joni Mitchell with a "Blonde in the Bleachers" reference, eyeballs the next girl up, and paints a quick picture of his hollow hometown against the backdrop of an unwanted spring.