What is harder than leaving people you love is the loneliness and isolation of being left behind, and even more so when you are the only one left to remember. Singer-songwriter David Caspar’s new original single, “The End,” provides a poignant and deeply personal window into the experience of someone pondering those experiences and people lost to the past, irrecoverable and irretreivable.
Reminiscent of songwriters like Patrick Watson and Regina Spektor, “The End” is a piano and vocal-driven ballad of love and longing. It is melancholic but not morose, the subject of the song patiently, perhaps even peacefully, awaits his inevitable fate. Perhaps he will rejoin the people in his recollections. But perhaps they will only remain fleeting impressions.
Caspar opts to perform “The End” on an ever-so-slightly out-of-tune piano, creating a rich backdrop above which his smooth and silvery voice hovers. The slight crunchiness of the tuning is further emphasized in production with added reverberation and pedal, allowing the harmonies to wash over each other. Suddenly, his singing pauses, replaced by improvisatory flourishes in the high register of the right hand, seeming to be searching for something. For a moment, it seems as though the song might stop, perhaps having not found anything after all. But the chords pick up once again, the flourishes continue, and finally so does the melody.
But as the song closes and the piano grows quieter, Caspar offers no real sense of finality. Rather, even in the silence beyond the track’s end, we await the end alongside him.
“The End” is available on all major streaming platforms.
Written by Jacob Jahiel
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