Armor For Sleep Deliver 'Last Days' Video
(Clarion Call) Armor For Sleep have released the music video for "Last Days," the latest single from their brand new studio album There Is No Memory. Recorded with Sam Guaiana (Silverstein, The Devil Wears Prada, Between You and Me), There Is No Memory is a collection of songs that force the listener to question the very nature of their existence, of what makes us the people we are.
While 2022's The Rain Museum was a record written in the throes of the dissolution of the Armor For Sleep frontman Ben Jorgensen's eight-year marriage and his subsequent divorce, its setting was more fictional and metaphorical. By comparison, There Is No Memory is much more literal, much more grounded in the real world, and much closer to the bone.
Jorgensen had this to say about "Last Days": "This song is about imagining an ex as an old lady on her deathbed and wondering if she will evaluate her life and think what would have been if we had stayed together.
"In the song I'm fighting with myself by saying 'I know I shouldn't care anymore', but admitting that there is a part of me that still does and always will care. The chorus is 'maybe there's a part of me that's lost inside a reflection of a memory'.
"I struggled for a long time after this particular bad breakup obsessing over the details of what went wrong. This song is me admitting that to myself. It all leads up to a big admission at the end of the song: 'I would sell my soul not to care anymore'.
"When you're going through a traumatic experience - and are actually underwater in an event such as a divorce - it's very difficult to have any kind of perspective on anything other than that one thing that's consuming all aspects of your life," Armor For Sleep's Ben Jorgensen said. "'The Rain Museum' was written right after I went through this crazy life event. For this one, in contrast, I'm higher off that waterline, and I have a broader perspective now. I've been taking stock of my life as a whole, and so I found myself thinking and writing about the strange experience of memories and the power they have over all facets of who I am."
If that statement doesn't give it away, one listen to this record will. There Is No Memory is actually punctuated by it - it's an album steeped in life (and lives) lived, in recollections of the past, in the absence of what once was, in the lacuna brought on by the memories of what had been. Jorgensen is well aware of the irony of the title, but it's an intentional part of the record's narrative. He knew he wanted to write an album about memories, and while he was demoing the tracks at home, something happened that felt, if not quite like fate, then at least like it was connected to what he was writing about.
"While working on these demos one day, my computer crashed. But right before completely freezing, it spit out an error message on the screen that said: 'THERE IS NO MEMORY'," he recalls. Initially, Jorgensen's reaction was philosophical with a hint of despair. But then it made him think even more deeply about the record he was trying to write.
From the moment the crackling, fizzing energy of "The Outer Ring" kicks it off all the way through to closer "All The Best," you're transported deep into the wormholes of Jorgensen's memories and the multiple parallel worlds they create on this record. Yet as much as it's a collection of individual memories, there's also a narrative and thematic through-line. As the album progresses - via the bitter regret of "Breathe Again" ('If I could fold up time/Like a piece of paper/I would never have kissed you/This wouldn't exist to ruin our lives' he spits) and the urgent desperation of "In Another Dream," the hopeless helplessness of "What A Beautiful World" and the unfettered emotional vulnerability of both "Ice On The Lake" and "Last Days" - the mood shifts. It might begin with self-flagellating hostility but it ends with the hushed, heart-torn "All The Best" in a place of quiet acceptance and peace.
Each song is its own poignant and pointed reminder that - however vague, however unreliable, however distant - memories can contain as much, if not more, power than the person, place or feeling that they're echoes of. In fact, they can haunt us, control us, and change the way we think, act and feel, not just in the present moment but for the rest of our lives. 'Isn't it odd the way/We can give our lives to someone else/And mean nothing to them one day?' Jorgensen sings on that final song, a line as brutal as it is beautiful and which captures the contradictions that underline this collection of songs.
"It's an exploration of me wondering how much of my life is controlled by what I've been through," Jorgensen summarizes. "And trying to unpack all sorts of different memories, whether they're from relationships I've been through, betrayals, addictions, friends I've lost along the way. It's me wondering if I am just the collective sum of all the things I've lived through or if there is a me underneath it all who can still choose his own fate."
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