So, today I didn't make it to band practice because my car battery died, which is more than the average inconvienience in NYC as you might imagine. Anyway, in lieu of playing and driving and listening, things I enjoy immensely on their own terms, I am going to teach myself one or more songs from Icons, Abstract Thee, the year old EP from Of Montreal. I've been obsessing about the song "No Conclusion," the final track of a pretty decent handful of Hissing Fauna outtakes. Truly EP material, the song has none of the subtle lyrical/musical properties that make the album outstanding - it is ill-arranged, cumbersome, lumbering and would even overstay its welcome were not its final scene the payoff (the Don Giovanni of Of Monreal songs) when after a series of miserable pseudo-cidal self-revelations he goes meta with:

And i never ever wanted to write this song
I always thought things would change somehow
And we would start getting along
But it's hopeless

Sung jubilantly (and after the most truly low moment of this musical period, the acoustic  Sea Change-style "Derailments") , the admission both of absolute failure and absolute freedom – the moment when a breakup becomes more than feeling, but acknowledged as lived daily experience. Simple Past, hopeless yes but really over too.