Few song titles are as expressive and thorough in their descriptions of break-up whiplash than Toby Goodshank's “Baby I Feel Like I Just Got Cut in Half”. In our premiere of this indie power ballad, we celebrate the re-release of Toby's solo album Truth Jump Fall from the former-Moldy Peaches guitarist's extensive repetoire that saw the release of LA Boobs earlier this year. Never one to be confined to a singular approach, Goodshank brings us the baggage of thoughts, worries, responses and reactions that occur after that special someone drops those magic acerbic words, “we need to talk”.
The song begins with the a statement of the title's unforgiving sting in the immediate aftermath of heartbreak's onset with, “Baby I feel like I just got cut in half…today…no way,” and with the big power chord guitars strumming in you hear Toby wrestling with the divisive relationship logic and making a last ditch effort to salvage what remains after one of those bottled-up-for-too-long-talks.
“But she told me that this pain was good and necessary to grow. And you left me to do math, it took, me days, but you told me that it was just a phase, okay, okay we're great.” However, that in-between purgatory of denial presents those larger existential problems that grow out of proportion in the absence of healthy dialogues. “I feel I'm loosing soul, my eyes are vacant and cold and I've been dreaming so long that I lost sight of my goals and now I'm spinning too and twisting down the middle.” From the ex-lover's expressions of dissent, the tail spin of the broken hearted is expressed in terms of world weary fatigue but Goodshank leaves some of his best songwriting rhyme and rhythm schemes for last. “Sometimes it seems that these invertebrate schemes are both the ends and the means to this unspeakable, unholy scene”.
Where LA Boobs showcases the folkier sides of Mr. Goodshank, Truth Jump Fall presents everything from Toby's famous anti-folk-no-need-for-genre approach that reveals hidden series of truths from one our favorite modern day troubadours.
Toby Goodshank's re-release of Truth Jump Fall is available now.
