5 Saddest Sundowner Songs
Yesterday, Sundowner (the mostly acoustic solo project of Chris McCaughan from The Lawrence Arms, but you probably already know that) announced that he was signing to Fat Wreck Chords to release his third album later this year. This is great news, because both Sundowner records to date have been pretty outstanding, but also troublesome, because sometimes his shit is just too real and makes me feel sad.
In fact, the last time I listened to Sundowner (barring yesterday when I was “researching” information to make this list) was when I was driving to the southern Chicago suburbs to pick up Amanda on my way home from Indiana and had a bunch of unspecific feelings and just needed a solid 20 minutes of reveling in them.
McCaughan has an unrivaled ability to write songs that perfectly encapsulate the boredom and frustration of being at once ambitious and aimless and having what seems like too much and too little time. In other words, McCaughan uses his almost David Foster Wallace-esque ability to articulate things that you always think about in the back of your mind, but don’t spend a whole lot of time actually reflecting on, because, well, they’re kind of sad. Match that up with some expertly employed minor chords, and you’ve got the secret ingredients for surfacing a lot of feelings.
That being said, here are the five saddest Sundowner songs, if you need to just take a moment in the middle of the week or something.
