Can We Press Rewind

Injury Reserve “Knees”

“Knees” is built around the opening chords of Black Midi’s “Sweater” but while the Black Midi song has a romantic grandiosity to it, Injury Reserve intentionally disrupt the rhythm to make it feels stumbling and awkward. This approach is brilliant for a song about grief – there’s scattered moments of grace, but it’s mostly the musical accompaniment to someone barely holding it together. Ritchie With A T’s vocal is mostly sung with a lovely, understated vulnerability but his performance also cracks apart, rambling off into verses that aren’t quite rapped but don’t quite register as spoken word either. But as much as this song willfully swerves into awkwardness the main thing that hits you and stays with you is the purity of the sentiment and the bits of beauty scattered throughout.

Buy it from Bandcamp.