How does a good grief song go? Acoustic guitar? Check. Weepy lyrics? Yep. Sunlight, wind, trees, nature? Well, you knew it was going that way.
“Without You Here,” the most recent single from Jersey Shore alternative rock band Starboard to Sunset has these things. It also has a lot of latitude to just sit with grief without trying to convince you how big, cinematic, and romantic this oh-so-unoriginal song is going to be. Lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Tom Damiano zeroes in on the lesser-known facet of grief-the eerily unremarkable absence of a once-present person-focusing on what is lost without grand gestures or plotted-out camera angles.
That is not simply losing a person, of course. It is the fear that time is going to take something else as well-that person’s life, their presence, the sound of their voice-away, away, away. “Without You Here” repeats that phrase with an almost resigned tone, offering a lot of weight behind the simple statement of isolation. It revolves around the idea of that absence, doesn’t try to finalize the emotion, and ultimately offers a more accurate story.
Grief doesn’t revolve around tidy narratives or chronological flows. It rests, it drifts, it stays long past the end of the song or moment, and it would be a foolish decision to squeeze tears out of the listener. Here, Damiano allows the guitars enough space to soak in the sentiment-between the alternative edge and the indie rock pull in the background-and to leave space for you, in turn, to feel it. It does not shake out tears or try to beat the emotion into place; it just enables you to sit with the emotion, letting the guitars glow as the words settle into the background.
That conscious choice is also an asset because the lyric work is most effective when it links memory with everyday images. Sunlight and wind are hardly unique in their figurative scope, but they fit the song’s overall structure: that the world is still turning while an important person is gone. Sadly, Tuesday does not hold up.
Starboard to Sunset’s “Without You Here” is modest, and the emotion is huge. It does not try to make the audience cry, does not try to teach a lesson, but simply offers up that feeling of a loved one leaving.
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About the Author
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
