“So I drive home alone, not like you’ll miss me,” Cal Veatch, the DC indie pop creator, who’s been putting out tunes that are as vulnerable as they are catchy for a couple of years now, sings on his latest, soaring single, “Last Drive Home.” “I drive home alone, one last time.” It’s a visceral song that he says is about his first time getting his heart broken. And it’s a fully-realized, long-time-coming song (five years in the making) that will either heal you in solidarity or open past bitter-sweet wounds, like the heart just tends to do with the right song.
“It’s like I’ve been erased, I thought we were on the same page.” Produced by Alex Millar, the front person of the band Vattica, the song travels a great distance sonically, from verse to pre chorus to chorus to bridge, always upping the emotional ante. It’s as if singing the song is unravelling knotted up guts until they’re all on display. Which is what, I think, Cal intended.
“And don’t tell me you’re sorry / We both know you don’t want me / So say goodbye,” Cal sings in the bridge, where he shows his impressive, moving vocal range. This song is his goodbye, his nail in the coffin. It wouldn’t be so hard if his love interest didn’t have his “heart beating in your hands… yeah you really got the best of me.” Some of his favorite artists are female artists, like Michelle Branch and Amy Allen, who add soul to the singer songwriter genre, and Cal’s emotional range matches theirs.
The mystic poet, Rumi, said, “Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.” Cal does a free fall in this song and waits to be caught, by his listeners who can relate, his friends who care, his willingness to love and lose and love again. In his “drive home alone” he joins the multitude of those who have been in that position before, and takes his place among the struggling human race, the lovers of the world. Who knew struggling could sounds so beautiful.
Prism Reviews 