Video | The Speedbumps – Done Treading Water

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDrO0Sa3wF8[/youtube]

Are you having a tough day? Muffin. To buck yourself up, consider bears. I’ll explain: even your best day would be a super terrible and boring day for a bear, so a bear having a bad day outweighs your bad day by a million. The Speedbumps’ video for “Done Treading Water” will prove that for you. See? Your day wasn’t so bad.

The song’s gentle, folky sound belies the subject matter; sometimes everything is really the worst and you just have to get through it. It’s soothing to have pretty little tinkling keys while you reflect upon all the bad things that have ever happened in your life. It’s reassuring to have plunky guitars while you wonder if you’re going to sink or swim. Ultimately, it’s a hopeful song, but one that doesn’t leave out the minor chords, which is right, just, and true. My heart isn’t as black and cold as I may act like it is, but I’m still not on board for happy-flappy sunshine kumbaya nonsense, because that isn’t what the world is like. The Speedbumps clearly recognize that and know how to talk about hope without acting like everything is definitely going to be ok.

Maybe it’s because they’re from Ohio. That is some Rust Belt realness. But it is softened with their indie-folk touch (they have “a passion for hollow-bodied instruments,” a phrase which I find utterly charming), so you don’t just get beaten endlessly about the head with grim reality. After all, isn’t life enough of a string of miserable events already?

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