While relationships are fun, many of us are bound to experience heartbreak in the form of breakups. They’re painful and involve a lot of tears, nights of little sleep, and a mixture of all sorts of emotions. To sum it up simply, breakups suck. Despite this, they’re a mess of an experience that can lead us to learning a lot about life. Beverly Kills of Gothenburg, Sweden cover this subject in their track “In This Dim Light”.
The song introduces itself to us with a low hum that sounds like helicopter blades before a lo-fi guitar comes in. A picture is painted of a dark night:
Everything turned black that night
And when we woke up
All were dressed in white
It all turned black last night
I sold my habits to a kid
And I told him it was art
While it’s often sad and tragic, there can be a sense of beauty in the clean slate that one has after a breakup. It feels like a rebirth of sorts. It’s almost like you’ve had a really good sleep after a hard day.
The bad habits that they sold to a kid faintly reminds me of how we’re often sold the idea of what habits people should have in a relationship through mediums like film. Funnily enough, while they seem romantic on the screen, they’re often moderately if not downright toxic. They go on to remark how they feel more alive now as the song bursts into an electric frenzy of fast-paced guitars and percussion to further emphasize this point.
Like the inner turmoil we often face in breakups, the song eventually comes to a lull in energy, introducing us to a series of repetitive plucking string as the vocalist reflects on their 4 AM walk along their lover’s street of lies and deceit. Despite this, they take a step back to admit that, if they had to be completely honest, they were never true to their love either; instead of choosing to hold the hands of their lover, they chose to hold hands with their sweet dreams instead.
They realize they’ve fallen in love more with the idea of someone rather than their true self.
When we put someone up on a pedestal or rush into relationships without really getting to know someone first, this can often happen. Other times, people change and, while you try, you just can’t come to grips with the new person they’ve become.
As this slow reflective part of the song builds up in intensity with slowly increasing percussion and bass, the vocalist makes peace with themselves:
4am walking down your street
Losing track of time and losing sleep
I guess I’ll go insane
But I feel more alive now
They accept losing it for a while. This is the way things go in break ups and, ultimately, they know they’ll feel more alive in the end and that’s what matters. They’ll learn from this experience and avoid making the same mistakes they had in the past. Despite knowing this, the vocalist says they keep hearing a promise in their head playing on repeat. They keep trying to tell themselves it doesn’t matter now, that whatever promise was made was not followed through on, and that it’s time to move on..
While it’s easier to assume it’s the other person’s fault, I think this could be taken as a personal promise or even a collective one. Sometimes we have our own regrets. Maybe you felt you didn’t try hard enough in the relationship or do something you wish you had.
Whatever it is, it’s time to move on and let the past be the past.
From here, even faster blows of percussion along with a driving guitar propel the song forward before sounds of whispery vocalization join into the collective mixture of conflict that can be felt in breakups. The song ends on a distorted sound that reminds me of an industrial fan.
Overall, the song is a frenzied journey of music that I feel like reflects how many of us feel during breakups. It’s a mess that we have to wade through with both its moments of calm and moments of sheer hysteria.
