Heather Matthews, Culture Editor
Barcelona is three guys from Seattle that literally delve into your soul and will pull out every emotion you have ever felt.
But seriously, dramatics aside, you know when you’re walking away from a relationship gone bad, a conversation where you had so much more to say, or when you drive away from your lover’s house, and all you can think is how much you regret doing something, or even worse, not doing something? This is “Absolutes.” This album is a piano-driven tour-de-force of emotion that you will not like on the first listen. Or the second listen. But when your car door shuts and you think of the perfect thing to say, give Barcelona a shot.
“Absolutes” starts out with “Falling Out of Trees,” a lovely metaphor for being uprooted from everything you know and hold dear. The lyrics allude to relying on another person to bring you back to where you belong, but that no matter how hard you try, it’s just not the same. “It’s About Time” acts as a fluid transition into the main theme of the album, which seems to be a relationship that shattered like a baseball through your neighbor’s window.
“Stars” is the next song, and my absolute favorite. Punny, eh? The song paints the image of a couple driving out “on the edge of night” and watching the stars. From here, they can see everything, but then they turn back into the dark. Plato metaphors aside, “Stars” shows how often in relationships, we have the amazing talent to ignore what we know to be true in favor of ignorance.
By now, you are halfway down the road back to your house and the regrets are just piling up. Barcelona speeds through songs about discovering your cheating lover, how to avoid falling in love, and then subsequently pulling yourself up off the floor and scraping yourself off of the metaphorical shoe of your ex-lover. Here, your mind runs crazy with what would have sounded better, what would have hurt more to tell that lying bitch, or the one last hug that you couldn’t manage.
Barcelona charges through more songs, each one illustrating a different aspect of a relationship that has bit the big one. The first feeling of noticing how her hair makes her lips look so beautiful, or how everyone else tells you not to invest your all. Finally, the album comes to a close with the two final songs, “Numb” and “Please Don’t Go.” These act as one cohesive thought that is probably the most painful and universal feeling known to us. When he walks away for the last time. When she tells you that it’s over. When you know that there are things left unsaid, things left undone, and that there is not a thing on this earth that you can do to change it.
With this, the album, too, comes to too short a close. You’re home, you’re single and you are worse for the wear. But chin up, dear reader. Hit that repeat button and know that you are not alone. Remember to get up off the floor eventually and try to keep from using the lyrics from “Absolute” too much in real life, as hard as it will become.
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