After Tales from the Grift, the Brothers wanted to shift out of topical songs. We decided to pull together some love songs we’ve recorded over the years. We haven’t written many. We always felt that with so many love songs out there already, some of them great, we should explore other directions. And indeed, we have recorded many songs that would surely have occurred to no one else. And admittedly, even these love songs come from unusual angles, always with some ironic twist. Here, we have re-recorded some old ones we felt we could do better, left some as they were, and added a couple new ones. So here goes —

The City of Love (2024, from Binocular Visions) is reprised here as an opener. Like many of my songs, it began with just the title and seeing where it took me. As always, irony rules. But love does seem to be full of ironies, especially as we sustain it. Joys and sorrows, pleasures and pains, hopes and disappointments, spontaneity and patience intertwine endlessly. But we get there and stay there, as we “sigh and follow the ache.”

The City of Love

“She’s Cosmic” (July 2025) is about those early, smitten stages of love. It was sparked by a Tom Waits lyric about a dream-woman (“Coney Island Baby” from Blood Money, 2002): “the stars make their wishes on her eyes.” I thought I would take that idea over the top and around the bend, all the way to the four laws of thermodynamics. The slow-moving instrumental break is meant to capture a stock-still sense of awe.

She’s Cosmic

“Draped Across My Mind” (2015, from The Political Unconscious), is re-recorded here. It’s tragic-romantic, gothic, and biblical all in one song. It’s about lost love. I wrote it before I had read Freud’s theory of grief and melancholy. He suggested that the image of the lost love-object falls like a shadow upon the psyche, and that the ego is formed in part by lost love-objects. In the third verse, the song shifts from the singular woman to the collective feminine of Jerusalem, as grieved by the Jewish exiles in Babylon (Psalm 138). My vocation in ministry began and continued to evolve through lost loves.

Draped Across My Mind

“One-Another” (2018, from Man of Irony) looks at how losing “the one” can lead to “another and another besides.” The callous tone of the “Heart and Soul” (Hoagy Carmichael) interlude conveys the dangers therein.

One-Another

“Judy Iscariot” (2015, from The Political Unconscious) is about mistaken ventures in love. No one is “exactly what he/she seems.” Our projections on each other may begin beatific, then turn malignant. Or, as the early Joni Mitchell sang (“Both Sides Now”), “It’s love’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know love at all.”

Judy Iscariot

“Jungian Love Song” (2009, from Terms and Conditions) is re-recorded here, and finally turns this collection in a happier direction. Love’s projections can turn out well, with good faith on both sides. This is about the way those projections play out in the long term. You may recognize a play on “O Little Town of Bethlehem” in the third verse. Sustained love is redemption — and atonement.

Jungian Love Song

“Aw Darlin’” (2017, from Man of Irony) was written as a Valentine for my wife, Caroline. It’s a simple confession of heart-felt inarticulateness. I can’t think of anything more to say about it.

Aw Darlin’

“Forever Now” (August 2025) is about loving someone forever and “what forever looks like now.” It’s the view down from the horizon of eternity to where we’re standing in the present. Love is a mixture of “sweet nothings and pet peeves.” So there we are.

Forever Now

“Can’t Kill This Love” (2024, from Binocular Visions) finishes this collection. I have to admit, the opening lines about murder jolt even me. But given the necrophilic culture around me today, I intuitively chose to explore love together with its strongest counterpoint. The sustained piano figure, remaining the same through the chord changes on the organ, intends to evoke the persistence of “this love,” which to me is divine. But our human loves participate in it, if only imperfectly. We (the Brothers) invited our favorite girl-group, the Digitones, to be our angel choir.

Can’t Kill This Love