Amanda Shires - "When You Need a Train It Never Comes"

I happened on Amanda Shires because of a New York Times magazine article about her husband, Jason Isbell. His story was an inspiring, though not unusual, tale of excess and redemption. The part of the article that stuck with me was when the writer said he'd had Shires' song "When You Need a Train It Never Comes" on repeat for weeks. Once I heard it I understood why. It's not the kind of song I'd ever listen to just once. Spooky, depressing, sad, desperate, with an expressive edge that comes from a narrator who has maybe already given up. When I first heard it, I thought of it as a straightforward break up song, but since then I've read interviews with Shires where she mentions having written countless songs about suicide, which gave the song a darker layer that I hadn't picked up on previously. After over a year I still have it on heavy rotation and it is my go-to song when I am feeling crummy. It's a song made to be on repeat when you're driving away from a rotten situation, or when you're awake and alone in a house full of sleeping people because sadness won't let you rest.

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