I don't need to be telling you this, but damn if there aren't some things that just get you. Without notice, you can be leveled. You can be diminished to some sort of inaudible crumble, an open quote that says nothing and everything in its choking silence. The weighty pause in the air bowls you right over and you succumb to whatever it wants to do to you. You submit to the pounding, to that reminder once again that we are full of weaknesses, that we will hardly ride off into the sunset the way we like to think we'll ride off into the sunset. Calgary songwriter Reuben Bullock, the leader of Reuben and the Dark, brings many of these moments right out into the open in his songs. They are songs about men who aren't so much stuck and stumbling, but men going through all of the turbulence that they expected. These aren't extraordinary tales of anything monumentally tragic, but rather the mundane tragedies that cuddle up at our feet, on top of the blankets while we sleep.