Eskimeaux’s “Broken Necks” was written as part of an ongoing musical dialogue with Keith Hampson, who releases music under the name Power Animal.
Power Animal’s “3 Months And A Week” — the song that “Broken Necks” was a response to — will be included on his upcoming full-length, Good Wind Pt. 1. It samples a song from Eskimeaux’s 2011 album Two Mountains, and twists the familiar refrain from one about bending over backwards to support someone else into one about not being able to support yourself at all.
It was written during a week-long hospital stay, and bears the scars of isolation and helplessness, of wanting to get better for the one that you love but having no control over your own body, of feeling simultaneously guilty and frustrated. “My only sustenance from the words you said/ But dying wondering how it fell apart,” Hampson and Smith duet, projecting the inevitable end of their unsustainable romance. “Of course it did: I was trying to fix something that I could not fix/ I was blind from the beginning/ I was fumbling round on the ice so thin, just wondering how I kept falling in.” Hampson places their struggle against a gauzy, shuffling beat that both invites you closer and keeps you at a distance, much like the relationship that inspired it. It’s a powerful and haunting piece of music, made only more so by knowing its protracted lineage
The Fat Angel Sings 