Circle the Drain

"Headlock" is one of the more sonically expansive tracks on the "Valentine" album — there's a fullness to the production, a layered quality in the guitars and the way the rhythm section commits to the pocket, that gives the song a physical weight. Jordan's vocals arrive here with more edge than elsewhere, a slight roughness in the upper register that signals emotional pressure. The song deals with a specific kind of suffocating relationship dynamic — the feeling of being held in place by someone who claims to love you, the confusion of tenderness and control occupying the same space. What's particularly effective is how the music mirrors this: it's dense without being claustrophobic, full without being overwhelming, which captures exactly the ambivalence of being in something that hurts and holds at once. There's a lineage of women in indie rock writing about suffocating romance with this kind of specificity — from mid-nineties riot grrrl through to the early-2020s wave Jordan belongs to — but "Headlock" earns its place in that tradition by being concrete where others are elliptical. You reach for this song when you need music that understands that complicated doesn't mean undecided, that you can be clear-eyed about something and still be inside it.