North Carolina’s Twilark lets a hangover expose the frightening cost of needing another person on “Tired to Sleep,” a dreamy indie folk reverie whose lilting country sway and radiant harmonies carry the morning after with a warm, crooked smile.

Stream: “Tired to Sleep” – Twilark

A hangover can strip life down to its least flattering truths: The thirst, the self-pity, the sudden terror of needing another person.

Bleary-eyed and bittersweet, Twilark’s “Tired to Sleep” drifts through that bleary reckoning with a crooked smile, letting exhaustion and longing blur together until even rescue sounds like a reasonable request. Gentle harmonies and lilting country sway give the morning after a dreamy grace while preserving the darker joke underneath.

I woke up so tired
But not so tired that I can’t sing
I’ve been walking around,
but I wish I was falling
Into something new
I’m just so tired of being me without you

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Tired to Sleep,” the dreamy new single from Twilark. The Raleigh, North Carolina indie folk project of singer/songwriter Canon Pence, Twilark channels its creator’s deep regional roots and sharply observant pen into music steeped in Americana, melancholy, and sly irreverence. Following “The Deeper I Fall” and “No Cowboy Song,” “Tired to Sleep” arrives as the opening track and third single from Twilark’s forthcoming second album, Never Learned the Tide, out September 11. Produced by Dominic Billett and recorded over six days at Nashville’s Bomb Shelter, the record brings Pence together with Erin Rae, Spencer Cullum, Maya de Vitry, Paul Defiglia, and a close-knit cast whose intuitive performances give these songs their easy, spontaneous pulse.

That spirit of discovery sits at the center of Never Learned the Tide. Pence allowed the arrangements to take shape in the studio, trusting the musicians and the material to reveal which ideas deserved another life. The song chosen to welcome listeners into the album proved how rewarding that openness could be.

“This song underscores the lesson I’ve learned a few times starting out as a musician – you never really know how songs will turn out,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “The songs that you think will be the singles aren’t, and sometimes songs that you almost didn’t include turn out to be favorites. That’s the case with ‘Tired to Sleep.’ Written as a kind of throwaway hangover song and almost forgotten, I hadn’t considered it for recording until I landed on the more fun, irreverent nature of Never Learned The Tide. But it came together organically in the studio, and really came to life with the dual harmony backing vocals from Erin Rae and Dominic Billett. It ended up being first on the album because it’s both an easy entry point for the style of the album, and it typifies the dark humor that often comes with Twilark songs.”

The song earns its place at the album’s threshold through contrast. Pence sings with an airy restraint while Rae and Billett rise behind him, their intertwined voices casting a hopeful sheen across a narrator sinking deeper into his own malaise. The arrangement sways rather than stumbles, carrying his misery through graceful acoustic textures and a light country lilt that makes every rueful admission land with an affectionate wink.

“I woke up so tired / But not so tired that I can’t sing,” Pence begins, introducing a man worn down yet fully capable of narrating his collapse. His hangover quickly opens into a deeper crisis: “I’m just so tired of being me without you.” Thirst becomes drowning, physical discomfort becomes emotional disorientation, and the desire to be rescued clashes with a lifelong resistance to dependence. “I never wanted to need anyone or anything,” he confesses, before reaching the truth waiting beneath all that stubbornness: “Maybe I do need to be rescued.”

I don’t know what to do
Without you, I feel lost
I never wanted to need
anyone or anything
Maybe I didn’t know the cost
Well here we are

I woke up so thirsty
You’d think I haven’t had a drink
You’d think that I’m not drowning
Would you rescue me?
Would I see my life
flashing before my eyes?

The song’s special pull comes from the distance between its smile and its wound.

Its melody lolls contentedly while its narrator loses his grip on who he is, and those radiant backing vocals make his neediness sound briefly weightless. Pence never sacrifices the sadness for the joke or the joke for the sadness. He lets both occupy the same rumpled bed, capturing the strange clarity that arrives when exhaustion leaves a person too depleted to keep up appearances.

By the final verse, sleep offers neither escape nor renewal – only the faint hope of waking up sorry for somebody else. The hangover has already done its work, stripping Pence’s narrator down to the need he fought hardest to deny. Never Learned the Tide arrives September 11; until then, let “Tired to Sleep” keep you company while the room steadies and the truth settles in.

Without you, I don’t know what to do
Without you, I feel lost
I never wanted to need anyone or anything
And most of all, I didn’t want to need you
But if I find myself asking what even am I anymore
Maybe I do need to be rescued

Well if I’m so tired, maybe I should go to sleep
Maybe I’ll wake up feeling sorry for somebody else
But not for me

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:: connect with Twilark here ::

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Stream: “Never Learned The Tide” – Twilark

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 © Ladye Jane Vickers

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