A tune that wanted, more than anything, to be a love song. It is not a love song. It may have been close at one point, but now the song is lying on its back, holding on to loss because it’s the closest relative to the real thing. Everything pales in, in comparison, to the one I love, in heaven above. A desperately sad song, stoking a small, lonely fire, not to stay warm, but to reanimate the cureless disconnection with “the one I love.”

“Pales In Comparison” is the last song on Mall Walk‘s S/T Cassette EP. The video was written and directed by Drew Pearson, singer and guitarist for Golden Drugs, and the video stars Gay Henry, artist, musician and master lip-syncer.

The song and video are unabashedly American in a lot of ways (and maybe not so much in other ways). A trans-woman rides in the bed of a truck, singing to herself while she passes tractors and crops, reminiscing a deceased and lingering love: “Screaming cursing how, truth can’t hurt me now. Gonna drive all through the town, red wine and a xanbar, drunk and high in his old car, singing CCR.” The song ends with repeated guitar phrase, reverb-ed out and alone, in what sounds like a vast cavity.

Mall Walk, True Widow, King Woman, LSD & The Search For God
The New Parish
November 20, 2015
8 pm, $15-18, (+18)