Back to Work

Originally released on A Day at the Office (2016)

The natural companion to It’s Time to Say Goodbye, and it plays like one. Full, busy arrangement at the start, alto and trumpet chasing each other through fast sixteenth notes, the sound of Monday morning arriving whether you’re ready or not.

Then, somewhere in the middle, it stops. The chase pauses, and a guitar solo comes in that isn’t really a solo in any conventional sense, one note. Thijs Huijbens gets total rhythmic freedom, any pattern, any phrasing he wants, but he’s locked to a single G the entire time. Tension builds underneath it too, long notes, some in octaves in the trumpet, patient and quiet, right up until the whole thing snaps back and the noise starts all over again exactly where it left off.

Think of it as the two pieces telling one story. It’s Time to Say Goodbye is the beach in Nice, the exhale, the holiday. Back to Work is Monday, the same chaos resuming, with one brief, honest pause in the middle where you almost remember what stillness felt like. By the end it’s business as usual again, every good intention you made on that beach quietly abandoned. Same time next year.