There are persistent issues coming in and out of the light in Lera Lynn’s enchanting, emotionally hardscrabble songs. They’re present in silhouettes and profiles of people hanging halfway out of doorframes. They’re present at the graveyard, on a Sunday morning, visiting that lump of ground and headstone, with a bottle already in hand. The issues are that people stay broken up about other people for much longer than is ever healthy and they know that they were so quick to initiate the breaking up, the packing up and scramming, cutting the losses and running for the hills.
People know when they’ve done wrong and they’re always likely to sense when they’re being wronged, but there’s usually a disconnect that puts it all together and it’s that feeling of betrayal that turns them into sour pits or makes them feel as if they need to know why they’ve once again been hurt, and by that particular person, no less. It’s a bewildering feeling that takes over, when there’s nothing reasonable to latch onto, when there is nothing that can ease the boiling stomach juices.
Lynn is a gifted storyteller and her songs are filled with folks who have been on the wrong side of the final score more times than they haven’t been. The thing of it is though that they all tend to understand that they weren’t supposed to be the victors much more than they actually were. They recognize their destructiveness and they would be the first ones to admit that they’ve let it get the best of them time and again. No one likes to think that they’re the dangerous one in a relationship. No one wants to admit that they could be the poisonous ingredient, but it just means they’re living too close to the epicenter.
In “Coming Down,” Lynn sings, “There’s no need to stay here/There’s nothing that you can do now/I have unstitched myself in the best way I know how/Please leave me be/I’ve hurt you this time/This could be the end of me,” and it’s right there where we see the whites of the eyes and the underbelly of the beast that in no shape or form resembles a beast—just another person capable of hurting and leaving through that doorway.