Always

"Always" sits in the strange temporal register that RÜFÜS DU SOL occupy most naturally: not quite past, not quite present, a mode of feeling that exists outside chronological time. The production has an oceanic quality — synthesizer waves cycling through the mix with gentle but irresistible momentum — creating the sensation of being carried rather than propelled. The track is one of their most melodically generous: the central chord progression has an inevitability to it, as though it was discovered rather than composed. Koh's vocal performance here is restrained in the best sense — holding back creates more feeling than release — and the lyrics operate through accumulation, small observations building toward a commitment that arrives not dramatically but with the quiet authority of something decided long ago. The word "always" is among the most loaded in the language of attachment, and the song earns its use of that word by grounding it in the specific and temporal rather than the absolute. It's the kind of track that means different things depending on where one is in a relationship's arc — hopeful early, deeply reassuring in the middle, devastating at the end.