With only three other tracks tucked under their belt, LA-based duo JOME recently released their newest song “Snow” on their SoundCloud page. Simply put, “Snow” is a tranquil composition that traces the loss that comes with leaving and all that lingers behind, even with the passing of time, even with the fading of memory.
What if we lived in the same town?
What would have happened then?
I picture you in your winter gloves
Wishing that I never left
Listen: “Snow” – JOME
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JOME dive right in, breaking the serene surface of their song, raising unsettling questions that will form the embittered, reflective undertone of their track. The doomed “what if”, the suffocating “what could have been”, thoughts that plague us long after things are over, thoughts that sustain us- painful as they might be and thoughts that unsettle us, that allow us little respite.
Wishing that I never left
Throat closing, waving from across the street
Heartbroken, you still got a piece of me
There is a wintry bitterness that cements the soft prelude before the chorus swarms in around us in soft lulling waves, acting as more of an explanation than an accusation. The simply lyrics offer a series of fragmented images– tangible, like the ‘wooden room’ and intangible, like ‘changing in an afternoon’, managing to perfectly represent the imperfect, often oxymoronic blend that we call memory.
I tiptoed alone
To your wooden room
I felt you changing
In an afternoon
We left it open
Kept the pages clean
I didn’t mean to let you go
I still see you in the snow
Interestingly, JOME’s Snow draws a curious parallel with their other song titled ‘Cinnamon’. While ‘Cinnamon’ is a delicate, lush song intoxicated with affection, dipping deep into the warm rush of love, Snow emerges as the cool, wintered opposite both in terms of lyrical content and music. Disillusioned and distanced, the new song indulges in far more of self-introspection and conflict than Cinnamon does, true to the clear fact that parting and change bring more perspective and more maturity.
I held my breath on the river
We were supposed to be good
You were afraid of the moonlight
I walked you home through the woods
My suitcase was heavier than I thought it’d be
I looked back and caught you crying
Whether the parting is imagined or real, ‘Snow’ invites us into a glass room of mellow beats and softened chords, allowing us to disappear into our heads and our hurts for a small while, knowing cleverly that their song is not theirs alone but instead, a song for us all who have second-guessed our decisions, who have left people behind, who have also been left behind, who have had hearts broken, who have looked back and wanted for things to change; a song for all of us who fight our doubts, fears and ‘what-ifs’ constantly, every day, without the promise of any peace.
From this side
I can hold it better now
You were wrong
You were right
Perhaps that is why ‘Snow’ becomes a track that is hard to dismiss, because it so easily reflects our own reductive remembrance of the past, because it makes no attempt to disguise the conflict that has been there in love (and the conflict that will always be), choosing instead to go with, “You were wrong, you were right.”
With the bridge comes not only the honest admission of conflict and confusion, but also the hope of healing– “From this side, I can hold it better now,” seems to say that even as the memories linger, as the regret follows, there is the comfort of healing; that despite the bitterness, the lack of clarity, despite the need to go back and make things right, there will come a point when it will no longer hurt so much, when the pain will become bearable.
I tiptoed alone
To your wooden room
I felt you changing
In an afternoon
We left it open
Kept the pages clean
I didn’t mean to let you go
I still see you in the snow
By the last chorus, something seems to have changed. The quiet is quieter, the soft words even softer and even as the music climbs, the melody rising, we are alerted to the ending. Snow evolves into a resting commentary on the very nature of love, explaining to us in it’s moments of self-awareness that through parting, through change, through loss, through memory, the people we have loved and the people we will love all become a part of us. And even as we attempt to find a solution to the incessant disturbance of thought and feeling, even as we attempt to fight off what has passed, even as we attempt to move on, it becomes clear to us– we still see them in the snow.
Alarming as it is, this is the truth around which Snow is beautifully crafted in muted tones, a stinging reminder of Rumi’s unsettling couplet: ‘Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, they’re in each other all along.’
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