I've been jamming out to this song by the band Harper Blynn, whom I had the pleasure of seeing years ago when they played a spectacular opening set for Sara Bareilles at Radio City Music Hall. "Long Way From Home" belongs with Richard X. Heyman's "Pauline" in my personal category of perfect pop songs: a tightly-structured, sweepingly melodic power-pop affair, with a wallop of a chorus. Backed by a driving bass and beat, chugging guitars, shimmering synths (on the studio track) and Pete Harper's harmonies, J. Blynn sings of leaving love and friendships behind, and feeling adrift and far from home. (He conjures up sharp nostalgia with just a couple of lines and one poignant image: "Remember me to all the places I've known / Make me an angel in the cold New York snow.")
Here's a stripped-down performance outdoors on a windy day in Brooklyn, with the Manhattan skyline behind them:
(And here's another live version with better audio, though with a much less interesting backdrop.) A song about being far from home may seem an odd choice for a playlist intended for listeners stuck AT home, but I've been thinking that in many ways we aren't home at all. To feel at home is to shut the door on the world outside and let out a long-held breath, to shed your armor, to let your mind settle, to feel secure and normal. Instead the world follows us through the door and we're deeply ill at ease, washing hands and scrubbing surfaces, tense from the low background hum of the news. We're masking up to brave once-welcoming streets, and we worry about what we might be tracking into the house when we return. For New Yorkers, the city we call home is in fundamental ways unrecognizable: restaurants are shuttered (with many disappearing for good), subways are largely empty (save for essential workers and some of our most vulnerable unhoused citizens), and the mere act of sharing narrow sidewalks with strangers has become an exhausting exercise in situational awareness. (Politically we may feel as if we're in exile too, as our leaders continue to fail us in shocking ways. Springsteen once wrote that "the country we carry in our hearts is waiting," and it seems as if we're waiting still.) So, for me at least, the song resonates now in a way that Harper Blynn surely never intended. But in an age of social distancing, this resonates too: Will you still love me A little further away from you? There is no distance I can dream of Could ever keep me Away from your love I say no I think of all the family phone calls and Zoom meetings, the rainbow pictures hung in windows, the nightly 7pm cheer for healthcare workers, and I realize that the love we bear each other remains strong, undiminished by distance or isolation. Love still binds this silent, emptied, grieving city together. May it see us through to the day we can truly feel we're home again. BONUS: Pete Harper and J. Blynn have worked together under several different band names, but hook-laden, melodic songcraft is consistently their superpower. Check out the gorgeous cascading harmonies of "Bound to Break" (a very close runner-up for today's featured song) and any track from their album Get It Out (available on Soundcloud), as well as singles like "I Wanna Love You" (as Mosco Rosco) and "Kick It Off" (as Motor Sales). -----
Listen to the Spotify playlist here.
Watch the YouTube playlist here.