Even though it was the year in which I fell head over heels into country music, if I had to pick one album as the soundtrack to my 2005, it would be The Forgotten Arm. Weirdly, nothing else made as much sense to me as it did (it had a lot to do with this).
… life just kind of empties out …
Musically and lyrically, the album’s pivotal moment comes about two-thirds of the way in, with the “Little Bombs”-”That’s How I Knew This Story Would Break My Heart” pair mapping out its characters’ emotional lowpoint and corresponding crystal-clear awareness of themselves and the mess they’re in. “That’s How I Knew…” is the more emotionally skyscraping of the two, the simplest, clearest, most vividly heartbroken moment on the album, but it’s “Little Bombs” that most speaks to me, the bruised despair that it wears on its sleeve all too convincing. Sighing, shuffling, wrapped up in helpless sadness, it’s the sheer prettiness with which it’s done that lends the whole affair the pathos and ache which really makes it.
