There are songs that are polished to a high sheen, every note in its place, every emotion carefully calibrated for maximum impact.
And then there are songs that feel like they were ripped from the artist’s chest, still beating and bloody, and offered up to the listener as a kind of sacrifice.
Block’s new single, “Over And Over,” is firmly in the latter category. It’s a raw nerve, exposed and humming with a nervous energy that is both unsettling and deeply compelling.
Block, for the uninitiated, is a name that carries a certain weight in the annals of New York’s downtown music scene. A key figure in the anti-folk movement of the late 1990s, he stood alongside artists like Beck and Regina Spektor, crafting a style that was equal parts punk-rock snarl and coffee-shop confession.
His music has always been a bit of a beautiful mess, a jumble of clever wordplay, and a kind of defiant vulnerability. After a major-label detour with Capitol Records and a subsequent sojourn on Wall Street, Block has returned to music with a renewed sense of purpose, and “Over And Over” is the latest fruit of this creative resurgence.
The song, the second single from his forthcoming album “Love Crash“, is a direct confrontation with Block’s lifelong struggle with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
“I’ve suffered from OCD since childhood, they didn’t call it that back then, horrible things in my head, over and over,” he explains.
This is a dispatch from the front lines of a personal war. The track was born out of a moment of crisis, recorded in a single, “off-kilter” day in a Brooklyn studio. You can hear it in the music, a looping, insistent drumbeat that feels like a trapped thought, a guitar that scrapes and jangles with a restless anxiety.
The production, handled by Chris Kuffner (known for his work with Ingrid Michaelson and Regina Spektor), is a masterclass in controlled chaos. The story behind the drum track is a perfect example of the song’s serendipitous creation.
Block asked Kuffner for a drum loop, and Kuffner, on the road at a soundcheck, recorded a drummer and sent it back.
That found sound became the rhythmic heart of the song, a perfect reflection of the spontaneous, in-the-moment nature of its recording.
Blake Morgan’s mix and mastering give the track a clarity that allows the raw emotion to shine through without getting lost in the noise.
Lyrically, “Over And Over” is a descent into a “darkish place” that Block says he’s never investigated before. The words are a torrent of intrusive thoughts, a litany of anxieties that will be familiar to anyone who has ever felt their own mind turn against them.
It’s not an easy listen, but it’s an honest one. In an age of carefully curated online personas and manufactured authenticity, there is something bracing about hearing an artist lay himself bare in this way.
It reminds me, in a strange way, of the confessional poetry of Robert Lowell, another artist who wrestled his demons onto the page, transforming personal pain into something universal.
What keeps the song from being a purely harrowing experience is Block’s innate sense of melody.
Even in the darkest corners of his psyche, he finds a tune. It’s a crooked, lopsided melody, to be sure, but it’s a melody nonetheless.
It’s the sound of a man trying to sing his way out of a panic attack, and there’s a strange kind of beauty in that.
The song is a reminder that art doesn’t have to be pretty to be powerful. Sometimes, the most affecting art is the stuff that is willing to be ugly, to be messy, to be real.
“Over And Over” is not a song for everyone. It’s a challenging, confrontational piece of work. But for those who are willing to go there with Block, it offers a rare and unflinching look at the realities of mental illness.
It’s a song that says, “I’m not okay, and that’s okay.” In a culture that often demands a relentless performance of happiness, that’s a message that feels important and necessary in equal measure.
It leaves you with a sense of the profound courage it takes to face one’s own mind, and the strange, unexpected beauty that can be found in the struggle.
