"Careful Now" by Copeland, Monday, November 8, 2021

There's an urgency in Eat, Sleep, Repeat unlike Copeland's first two records. The small-town feel of Beneath Medicine Tree, though the record deals with death and sickness, feels warmer than Copeland's third record. The band's follow up In Motion was a '90s rock album six years too late. As for packaging, the first two Copeland albums, and the fourth one, used earth tones to convey a slightly melancholy, but somewhat hopeful message. Eat, Sleep, Repeat's artwork looks like it was partially inspired by Gustav Dore and garden gnomes. The grey pencil drawings match with the minimalist sound of grey, electronic melodies interwoven with guitar-tracks hinting at some continuity in the band's work. Fans of Copeland expressed their dislike for the album, but it was a signal toward the musical experimentation that the band would travel toward.

MAYBE YOU SHOULD WRITE A LIST FOR ME. Opening with an acoustic guitar, "Careful Now" sets itself up to be one of the most straight-forward acoustic rock tracks Copeland plays. "Careful Now" is the fourth track on the record, following keyboard-driven album opener and second track and piano-driven "Control Freak," the album's only single. While "Careful Now" starts out as a straight-forward acoustic rock track, it takes a turn at the bridge to almost musical-theater material. The frantic lyrics of "Careful Now" show a young man searching for meaning, wanting anything to make sense. The lyrics are not dissimilar with the previous songs, nor with the proceeding. "Careful Now" shows a mental breakdown by the bridge, in which the singer realizes that it's impossible to categorize his worldview neatly. The bridge's keyboard production, the electric guitar, and Aaron Marsh's vocals lead the album into what Marsh calls the "Burt Bacharach" moment of the album, "Love Affair." But listeners hear these artistic moments in the bridges throughout the album. "Careful Now" also sets the tone for "By My Side" and the final two tracks. All of these tracks are dreary, so a particular dreary Monday after daylight savings time when the rain threatens to wash away the final leaves on the trees might be the mood for listening to Copeland's third album. Since we don't particularly care for these kind of days, we might write off this album as just dreary. But dreary needs a soundtrack, too.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO FEEL. In some ways, this song sounds like a young person waking up to the fact that the world is broken and that it no longer makes sense to him. When Marsh frantically declares: "I threw everything out that doesn't make sense / to find a thousand more things that don't make sense" the singer is showing a desperate frustration at a world that he thought he knew. Maybe it's a relationship that went by the book, but fell apart. Maybe it's an academic dilemma. Maybe it's the problem of evil. Maybe it's another theological problem. We've all been there, in our bedrooms, having mentally worked out the puzzle pieces. We fit them together, but the next day, we look at it and we notice the picture doesn't quite align and the pieces feel forced. We think, "If only I didn't have to rely on others. If only I could do it myself," and you'd solve the world's problems. But those frustrating days when the boss tells you that you've overlooked a key detail, your girlfriend tells you that she's not feeling it right now, or some horrible disaster happens on the news or a political movement inexplicably turned its back on logic, you have to go back to that puzzle and rework it. It the picture even designed or is it just random? 

 

Read “Careful Now” by Copeland on Genius