When you press play on Dear and the Headlights’ debut record “Small Steps, Heavy Hooves,” you may feel like you’ve just crash-landed on an episode of “One Tree Hill.” But even teenage melodrama, though we may not admit it, has heart.
The Arizona-based band has composed an album that plays tug-of-war with every possible emotion it can, whether it be misery or joy, and even decides sometimes that it truly does want to be just plain dull.
The opening track “Oh No!” captures the emptiness that we feel when we ache to leave someone we cannot free from our grasp. As lead vocalist Ian Metzger belts out, “Haven’t had a day alone since I met you,” we know right from the start that this album will be dripping with sorrow and unhappiness.
The tone shifts from melancholy to frustration with “Sweet Talk,” an angst-ridden song from the ex-boyfriend’s point of view, as he looks on to see the girl he loves with another. “Hallelujah” continues the theme of wallowing in self-pity, as it tells the listener of the memories it clutches to and the drugs and alcohol used in an attempt to wash them away.
The album shifts gears with “Happy in Love,” which will definitely bring a smile to your face. The soft, sweet guitar strings pick you up from the lonely hole you may have dug yourself into after listening to the first three tracks.
“I’m Bored, You’re Amorous” slows down the pace of the album, and not for the better. After this listener was left feeling surprisingly good from the romantic and lovesick previous tracks, this one in particular disappoints.
“Grace” and “It’s Gettin’ Easy” go from screaming of grief to whispering soft poetic expressions and were able to bring this listener back, but not completely. The intense language the songs before were able to speak is not heard in these two tracks.
The anguish makes its way back, however, with “Paper Bag,” using metaphorical imagery (“You can fill me up/I’ll only stay full for a while/And wisdom’s only shown me/That my loneliness is all my fault”) to step up the sadness and bring sentiment back to the album.
“Skinned Knees & Gapped Teeth” and “Mother Make Me Golden” break away from the forlorn romance trend and tell tales of offbeat childhood memories that can come from the clumsy awkwardness of youth.
“Run in the Front” brings more life to the album than any other song before or after it, bringing this listener close to tears as she drifted off into a dream world, taking in every word that was able to tell a thousand stories with each syllable. As Metzger sings “I’m missing you, I don’t want to…the gray in your hair, Angel/Your beauty can’t be covered by insecurity,” he tells us that this is much deeper than your average love ballad.
Sadly, “Midwestern Dirt” doesn’t pack the punch necessary to end the album on a strong note. Lyrics such as “I’m sinking in deeper midwestern dirt…And you’ll stay above me forever/Like you stay above me now” tell a powerful and thought-provoking story, but it wasn’t quite enough to draw this listener in.
Dear and the Headlights is a band whose music may be chosen for a soap opera, and there are occasions in which this would be the right place for the group to be. But Headlights has the capability to stand above and beyond that, and it shows. The album’s lackluster elements are somehow outshone by the beauty lying just beneath the surface of this heartbreaking saga of love and loss.
