The dark hearts of men come alive when Liz Green's got them in her clutches. She seems to enjoy bringing them into her place, just to observe them, just to see what they think they're capable of. They're easy to lure. It doesn't take her much to get them where she can see them, where she can just let them behave naturally. They never suspect that they're being seen fully so they don't hide anything but their brass smirks and their true feelings, for whatever they're worth anyway. No one could convince that they're worth a fancy at all, but the way that they lie there underneath, in the tall grass, behind the slicked hair and the expensive cologne, they're as fascinating as anything that there is.
The dark hearts have caught Green's imagination just right, for she lingers on them, leans onto them as she writes. They are the subjects that she gravitates to as she's composing her songs made of old-timey piano and literate tales meant more for cracked and yellowed books than three or four-minute songs. They are intricate songs with wandering and sometimes unspoken motives, all giving off the sensation that, no matter how they're starting out, the finishing touches are going to be startling and unmistakably bold and unfortunate.
Green tries to reach into those dark hearts and see if she can feel the nub of the seed that was planted, which started all the sad growth. She feels that it's likely still in there somewhere, split wide open, with the mess of a heart growing oblong out of it's diminished form. She sings, at one point, taking the voice of one of those men she sings about, "I've been through war, been through love/Climbed that hill so cold." It could be there, right on the side of that cold hill where a man just slumps down to his knees - sacked with visions of war and scars of love - and determines that things have changed for him.