Single Review: Joey + Rory - 'When I'm Gone'

Last year’s delightful single, ‘Headache’, has surprisingly not made the cut for Joey + Rory’s new album, due on Vanguard/Sugar Hill at the end of the month. That sets the bar pretty high for what songs may take its place. The latest single, ‘When I’m Gone’, is very different in mood and style, but is an excellent if almost defiantly uncommercial song.

A delicate piano accompaniment at the start builds up through the second half. Joey’s voice sounds a little throatier than usual as she delivers the emotional lyric, as though she is choked with the emotion of the version of herself she is playing here, someone who is anticipating death.

The song tackles impending loss, with Joey sensitively describing the situation facing her husband after that event. It insightfully portrays the contrast between the brightness of the outside world, with sunlight and singing birds, and the inner devastation felt by the one left behind, when

You wonder why the earth still moves
You wonder how you’ll carry on…
Dread the dark and dread the dawn

The very visual lyric offers hope for the future, but the melancholic melody and Joey’s intense, grief-filled vocal make the overall mood a deeply gloomy one. Lyrically, I think what makes it quite so mournful is that the death is not merely a possibility, but presented as stark fact. The consolation she offers in the words of recovery, while also stated as fact (“you’ll be okay”), seems like a hope rather than rooted in any specific source.

From the beginning of their career as a duo their public persona has been infused with their real-life relationship. In the accompanying video, they play what looks like themselves, or a close approximation, as they have done in much of their previous work. Combined with the specific nature of the storyline playing out, it all seems just a little too close to home for comfort. The pair’s real-life dog also makes an appearance; he can’t act, so his nonchalant cameo, signally lacking any sense of sorrow, is the video’s embodiment of all the sunshine and flowers the bereaved heart can see but not feel. The video is very well directed and acted, and effective at underlining the song’s message, but I think the song works more effectively on its own. Not just a sad song, this is one of the most depressing songs you’re likely to hear this year. Slow and downbeat with no last-verse redemption, this is a million miles from country radio, but it is a very fine song whose searing honesty about grief hits really hard.

Grade: A

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