Before we're officially gone, we sure do manage to get into plenty of situations that feel as if they're going to lead us quickly to that end. We say things that could bury us. We fight the fights that we never should have and choose not to fight the ones that are going to make the most difference and make things better for us. Or, if they don't make things inherently better for us, they're going to change things and it can be thrilling to just take a flying leap and change things up, even if it's for no good reason. It could lead us to somewhere worse, but it's the way our flights of fancy work. Sometimes we find that we're barely here or we're elsewhere, which is basically the same thing, though they feel different from one another when you're actually feeling them. Peter Walker, lead singer for the Los Angeles band Eulogies, brings us into the cold dens of folks who have either come undone or are anticipating that they're going to be done in and cooked sooner rather than later. They've been struggling to get by and they're hanging on by the dearest of threads of what they have left. The lights are dimming and the fall seems to have been completed some time ago, but there are still those signs of life that mean that this is far from over. They're not about to be swept into the dustbins just yet and they're trying to figure out for themselves what that actually means, or where they're going to go from here. Eulogies songs move cautiously and effectively from a depressing predicament into something slightly less so, in a way similar to how a lot of the finest Eels songs work. The people in them haven't sprung themselves free from what ails them and they know they may never so they've learned to tailor their expectations. Walker sings, "Now I'm left with our hapless memories/Can't deny that you gave them all to me," following the disintegration of a relationship that's going to linger for quite some time. It feels like we're standing in an apartment filled with state air. It's a mess - the trashcan is full and the sink is piling up with dishes. It has that ugly feeling of something being missing and the only way to get around it is just to leave, to throw a coat and a hat on and just go wandering out in the cold. The cold is your new home. It won't feel as cold after a while.