2017
Turned Around
A ballad about two people circling a truth they cannot quite say aloud. Its repeated turning around becomes both action and confession.
Found On These Albums
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Songs Tagged: reflective
79 songs
2016
A Single Tear
A ballad about all the things two people do not say to each other, and how a single tear can end up carrying all of it. The restraint is what makes it hit.
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2015
Slipping Away
A song about disorientation and the slow erosion of self-recognition. It speaks in clouded fragments, admitting only what it can: something is slipping away.
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Videos
2015
When it All Falls Down
A song built from parallel questions about what comfort might look like when everything falls apart. It asks for company, song, and touch without pretending any of them will fix the collapse.
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2014
Best Intentions
A heartbreaking father-and-son song about love, regret, and the distance that can grow despite every good intention. Its sorrow is quiet and reflective, more full of watching and wondering than of accusation.
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Videos
2014
I Ain't Ready
A plainspoken song about the approach of autumn as a metaphor for everything unfinished. The refrain softens its declaration into something closer to an admission.
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Videos
2012
I Don't Know
A song about the baffling pull of someone who keeps slipping away and coming back. It captures the weary tenderness of a relationship that never quite settles but never quite ends.
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2012
Walking Away
A leaving song for the moment when endurance has run out. It doesn't dramatize escape so much as accept it, gathering its reasons verse by verse until walking away feels less like surrender than...
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2010
Hour of the Wolf
A reflective love song that looks back on intimacy through images of mirrors, glass, and fracture. It carries the ache of hindsight, as though understanding has arrived only after the damage was done.
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Videos
2010
The Turning
A reflective song about sensing change before anyone can name it. It asks whether history is turning, whether a reckoning is coming, and whether we are capable of recognizing it while still inside it.
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2015
Easy
A searching song about the unruly act of making something true out of inner noise. It moves through fear, fatigue, and self-scrutiny toward rare moments when expression briefly feels effortless, even while the...
Rough Working Demo
Video
2011
Let's Remember to Forget
A rueful song about a love affair caught in its own repetition. The title says everything: this is not about forgetting, but about trying to will memory and desire into silence for one more night.
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August 1, 2023
Stuck in Park
A song written from inside the disorientation of dementia, where the world no longer lines up with memory. Its plea for help is simple, devastating, and impossible to answer fully.
Rough Working Demo
2016
Home Again
A searching ballad about a long road traveled and a mountain that's always there in the mind. The lyric doesn't sentimentalize — "broken people, bodies, hearts and minds" is in there — but it finds a resting...
Rough Working Demo
2015
Stephanie
A rock song about an unattainable woman, working through the full knowledge that it can't be more than what it is. Each verse ends on a slow, repeated version of the situation statement: too far out of reach,...
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2011
Simple
A plainspoken love song about wanting tenderness without games or pretense. What saves it from sentimentality is the final turn, where simplicity becomes less a slogan than a question asked of another person.
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Video
November 2, 2022
Mercy
A song, about a personified Mercy who comes to the garden, speaks voice that matters more than its content, and eventually leaves. The final verse is nearly a cappella, which was planned.
Rough Working Demo
July 4, 2021
So Damn Easy
A song about the creative process and how impossible it can feel from the inside. Its refrain catches the gap between how art looks and how it is made.
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April 10, 2021
Whisky and Ashes
A folk song, about lying on a couch and being unable to care, while the world outside has gone sideways. The last verse reaches for help with "this message bottle" and "a rescuer who needs a lot of rope.".
Rough Working Demo
May 4, 2019
When Push Comes to Shove
A song about how reason yields to attraction despite every better intention. It knows exactly when principle gives way to the body.
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September 9, 2018
I'm Alive
A plainspoken song that catalogs the moments, sights, and seasons that make being alive feel undeniable. It finds meaning in attention rather than proclamation.
Rough Working Demo
2018
Ephemera
A philosophical reflective song about impermanence. The verses invite presence and then withdraw the ground: the warmth between us will grow cold, this momentary flash, the sound will fade. The bridge...
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2017
Summer
A jazz-inflected folk song, built on a familiar, easy-moving shape. Three verses of summer sensory detail — golden, sapphire, ivory; distant, closer, right here — each closing with the recognition that...
Rough Working Demo
Video
2015
Over and Out
A song built from directional opposites — in and out, over and under, up and down — until all that movement circles back to defeat. Its plain language gives the pattern real weight.
Rough Working Demo
2012
Bushwhacking
A restless instrumental that lives up to its title, moving forward with a sense of momentum and uncertainty. It feels like pushing through rough country without a map and trusting motion itself to reveal the...
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2010
Let it Flow
An exuberant song about opening up to the world and letting joy rush in. What begins with windows and sunlight widens into something freer and more bodily, as if release itself were the point.
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2007
Whoosh
A brief wordless instrumental that earns its title: a rush of motion through extended chord shapes (E6/11, Amadd2/E, chromatic neighbor chords) that create a suspended, passing atmosphere. More sensation than...
Found On This Album
2016
Caroline
A summer-memory song held at a slight, wistful distance. It lingers over warmth, touch, and the way certain seasons stay suspended in the mind.
Rough Working Demo
2015
Hegel Revisited
A searching ballad that uses dialectic as a way of thinking about conflict, from the intimate to the historical. What keeps it human is the sense that every grand argument still lands in lived experience.
Rough Working Demo
2014
Urizen Awake
A philosophical piece built on a complex instrumental architecture ), which is unusual enough to shape the whole sonic character. The title references William Blake's personification of cold reason, and the...
Rough Working Demo
December 3, 2023
Cassandra's Lullaby
A ballad, named for the Trojan prophetess who was never believed. The lyric moves from present calm — breezes, branches, quietude — to a contemplation of cosmic scale and personal smallness, and returns to the...
October 19, 2019
I Don't Have To
A reflective song about being too far gone to try. The verses use a three-part structure — love you/want you/touch you but can't reach you — and the bridge acknowledges the other person's good intentions...
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2019
Callous Heat
A plainspoken song, about a woman who carries physical presence like a natural force. The description builds from specifics — boots, jeans, bedroom eyes — to a plain statement: she could blow your mind. The...
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December 24, 2024
Let's Do It
A philosophical song about building meaning without supernatural framework. The verses catalog what doesn't exist; the refrain proposes alternatives — find a cosmic voice, make a joyful noise, make it on our...
December 23, 2024
Edge of Night
A haunted breakup song that drifts from private hurt into a larger question about whether real feeling ever held. Its images of empty halls, cobwebs, and lingering debris give it the feel of grief after the...
December 23, 2024
Sodom Rd #87
A searching song about freedom, knowledge, and the pull of what lies beyond the known world. The title keeps one foot in a real place, but the feeling is larger: restlessness, curiosity, and the urge to break...
Rough Working Demo
December 3, 2024
Because of You
A short song built on superlatives — "bluer than blue, newer than new" — repeated with different color sets through four verses. The bridge is a simple chord pattern that lets the feeling breathe. The feeling...
December 3, 2024
No More
A three-string stripped-down accompaniment song, built on the simplest possible structure: three-note musical figures and a repeating pattern. The five verses catalog refusals — no more weepin', hatin', lyin'...
Rough Working Demo
April 20, 2024
I Don't Get It
A furious song of disbelief aimed at people who keep mistaking cruelty, fraud, and manipulation for strength. Its anger is sharp, but it never fully gives up hope that those being used might still wake up.
January 27, 2024
Smoldering Blue
A song, built entirely on the question of what to do with an attraction that probably shouldn't be followed. The musical figures — E6/11, Esus9, and two chromatic neighbor chords — create a sustained,...
Rough Working Demo
January 19, 2024
Waterfall
A love song The verses move between intimate physical detail and a philosophical claim: the universe becomes aware through us, and we belong at home in that awareness. The instrumental bridge repeats twice...
Rough Working Demo
January 6, 2024
How Far
A searching song about the limits of consciousness and how they feel from the inside. The verses move between the mechanical and the cosmic — a heartbeat, Saturn's rings, a painted sky — and the refrain asks...
January 6, 2024
What's That Got to Do
A folk song arguing for bodily autonomy and the right to live without explaining yourself to others. Four verses speak from four different subject positions — transgender, dealing with an unwanted pregnancy,...
2024
That's Okay
A song, about watching someone you disagree with get what they wanted — and knowing the costs will be paid by others. The bridge admits the narrator's helplessness, and the refrain gives the only available...
Rough Working Demo
September 16, 2023
Let it Lie
A folk song about choosing not to examine what you believe, and what that choice costs. The verses address the subject directly but without contempt, and the final refrain offers an alternative: "you don't...
July 30, 2022
On Our Own
A philosophical song that moves through inherited religious language toward a bracing conclusion: no one is coming, and meaning is ours to make.
Rough Working Demo
November 21, 2021
The Jay
A window-side meditation on a blue jay and the mystery of awareness itself. The bird becomes a way of asking what, exactly, is seeing and being seen.
August 12, 2018
Barely Awake
A song about spending most of life half-awake to what matters. Its final question gives the whole piece its ache.
Rough Working Demo
2017
In Line
A folk song, built entirely on adverbs — "soberly, carefully, methodically" — stacked verse by verse into a portrait of submission and quiet desperation. The bridge is instrumental and arrives as relief. The...
Rough Working Demo
2016
Comes the Flood
A slow, searching song about damage that may already be beyond repair. Its repeated refrain makes the recognition feel heavier each time it returns.
Rough Working Demo
2016
Spillway
A quiet philosophical song about being carried in the flow of time and existence — neither controlling it nor resisting it. The imagery is hydraulic throughout: tide, overflow, swept away.
Rough Working Demo
2016
Undiscovered Country
A folk song built on Hamlet's phrase — the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns — and tracking decline through seasons of the soul. Eight verses, each ending on a different tag. Long,...
Rough Working Demo
June 18, 2015
Cascumpec Rag
An instrumental, structured in three sections with a refrain between each. Named for a bay in Prince Edward Island.
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June 8, 2018
Never Give it Up
A motivational song that keeps its message as plain as possible: hold on to what matters and do not surrender it. The directness is the point.
Rough Working Demo
2017
Timeline
A philosophical song about history, fate, and the possibility that meaning appears only in passing. It questions everything while still listening for a voice in the noise.
Rough Working Demo
2016
Bump and Scrape
A philosophical song, about the sparks and friction of human experience. The first verse is physical, the second cosmic, the third reflective. The bridge is instrumental. The closing verse is the most honest:...
Rough Working Demo
January 14, 2021
Sandman
A philosophical song, built on a three-against-four rhythmic feel. The "sandman" is the false comfort of simple answers, and the bridge makes the counter-observation: "streaked with beauty, it reeks of...
2016
Gawain's Night
A winter solstice song, drawing on the Arthurian legend of the Green Knight. The green man represents the necessity of darkness before light, and the narrator integrates the lesson: wearing a bit of green as a...
Rough Working Demo
2015
A Walk in the Woods
A reflective walk through the woods that becomes a quiet hymn to attention, season by season. It finds renewal not in grand revelation but in the steady company of light, leaves, birds, bees, and breath.
2015
Absolution
A political and environmental reckoning that wonders whether absolution is even available anymore. Its repeated phrases give the song the sound of bad news already settling in.
Rough Working Demo
2015
Glimpse of Freedom
A searching song about seeing freedom in the animals — chickens scratching, sheep behind wire, dogs in the sun — and finding the comparison disquieting. The bridge redefines freedom as not just taking what...
1980
God Can Only Love and Grieve
One of the earliest songs in the catalog, this is a rain-soaked meditation on longing, sorrow, and the uneasy feeling of being joined to something larger than oneself. Its language moves between intimacy and...
January 27, 2024
Old White Dudes
A folk song that attempts to hold two perspectives on aging white men — their own dread, and the structural-power analysis — in the same frame without resolving them. The last verse finds the real problem in...
Rough Working Demo
2016
Way Deep
A song about a friendship too old and deep to explain. It trusts the bond more than the conscious mind that tries to name it.
Rough Working Demo
2012
Stop the Train
A warning song about runaway systems, where profit and speed have long since outrun wisdom. The image of the train is simple and effective: once the machinery is in motion, the question is whether anyone can...
1981
Sufi Poem
One of the oldest pieces in the catalog. The lyrics are a translation of a poem by the ninth-century Sufi mystic Dhu'l-Nun al-Misri, set to original music.
Rough Working Demo
March 1, 2024
Doesn't Your God Wonder
A song built as a direct challenge to divine certainty. The verses catalog specific Biblical incidents — the flood, bears sent to kill children, the Incarnation — with the plainness of someone reading a...
October 26, 2022
Busted
A reflective song, built on a list of alliterative failures: "busted and bungled, cracked up and crumpled." The three verses escalate the disorder before the final refrain offers something that might be hope:...
Rough Working Demo
January 14, 2022
Relief
A meditative song about the stories people tell in order to survive fear, uncertainty, and the knowledge of mortality. Rather than dismissing those stories, it wonders how they can become part of what makes us...
Rough Working Demo
February 10, 2019
Reflection
A searching, introspective song about the divided self and the feeling of being watched from within. It moves from ordinary awareness into something more mysterious, then turns toward love, where the question...
2007
When
A searching song about belief, denial, and the stories people tell themselves to avoid what is in front of them. Rather than preaching, it keeps circling the same hard question until it becomes the song's...
Rough Working Demo
January 1, 2025
New Years Day, 2025
A New Year's Day reckoning that catalogs crisis after crisis without softening any of it. The repeated questions at the center are as plain as they are hard to answer.
Rough Working Demo
July 2, 2023
Vivid Blue
A reflective song about watching the political moment from a porch, with a hummingbird and a pipe for company. The verses describe normalcy giving way to something harder to name, and the refrain arrives at...
December 28, 2022
Samhain
A song, written for Halloween. The Gaelic framing — kith and kin in the wind, spirits of trees, the Otherworld just behind the eyes — is taken seriously rather than as costume. The first verse is repeated at...
Rough Working Demo
March 27, 2026
Love Ain't Lovin' Me Back
A folk song, about giving love and not having it returned. The verse structure is plain — three lines building a situation, resolved in the refrain. The final verse turns the question: could this time be...
Rough Working Demo
March 22, 2026
Siren
A song about a woman who might be a hallucination or might be real, whose hair floats and whose siren song the narrator can't stop hearing. The refrain — "oh, I want to see me in your eyes" — is the most...
Rough Working Demo
May 18, 2025
A Thin Veneer
A folk song, about watching someone reveal themselves as something they didn't appear to be. The verses track from initial perception to current behavior to the question of how it will be viewed by history....
Rough Working Demo
Video
March 31, 2025
In Our Hands
A banjo song about two people who have been circling each other for too long. The first verse can't remember what to say; the second sees that she's been ready; the third admits they could both be lonely and...