single space: Shield Your Eyes, by Dry The River

or, why it's important to know where your relationship is going

I wish you could’ve warned me

Dry the River were an English band, formed in London in 2009 and separated in 2015. The band was composed of Peter Liddle, Scott Miller, Matt Taylor, Jon Warren and William Harvey, who left the band before it separated.

Today’s song is Shield Your Eyes, track #3 on Shallow Bed, the band’s first album, published in 2012 on Sony.

The song starts with a climate-change-like metaphor: summer has come, he’s “burning like an effigy”, and he didn’t expect this. He is probably talking about some change in his life (and potentially his relationship) that struck him by surprise.

He then uses a mythological metaphor (the Phrygian lions that could supposedly see the future) to explain that maybe their love was bound to come to an end since from the start, from the gate.

The singer says he tried to change, to transform and create a mixture of change and love to make it work, but that solution was deemed unfit, and he was covered in “warpaint”, humbled.

Times change, and the relationship comes to an end in autumn, not in the summer.

That’s something lions could have foreseen, after all.

Dry The River create a solid rock song, with a classic line of drums accompanying the lyrics, to stress the chorus and haunt us with doubt: will there be another season? In life, every year leads to another.

At the gate of our love

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See you next time!