“Tympanis” is a breakup song for the bad guy in the relationship. “It’s just a little reminder not to let yourself off the hook,” says Jacob The Horse singer/guitarist Aviv Rubinstein about the band’s new single.
For Rubinstein, it encapsulates a painfully precise moment—especially the lyric “she shakes her hands and grits her teeth.”
“That’s an ultra-specific memory for me—seeing this person from a block away get a load of me sitting on the sidewalk waiting for her, and her absolutely short-circuiting with rage,” he says. “The song switches perspectives, with me trying to empathize with the other person. But I was in such a depressive state about the way I acted that it was hard not to see myself from her perspective.”
“Tympanis” spent more than a decade “in the lab” before it made it onto an album—specifically, the self-released At Least It’s Almost Over, the latest slab of uncompromising punk/metal angst from the Los Angeles-based Jacob The Horse.
“Writing a song—especially one as confessional as this—is a way to numb yourself from the pain of whatever it is you’ve gone through,” says Rubintein, who grew up outside Philadelphia on a steady diet of subversive local legends like the Dead Milkmen and Ween. “You sing it so many times that the feelings start to die. I recommend everyone put their breakups into song.”
We’re proud to premiere’s Jacob The Horse’s “Tympanis.” At Least It’s Almost Over is out March 20.
—Hobart Rowland
