I’ve been living this song for four years. Ever since the diagnosis, I’ve been a little out of whack. I remember having this conversation with my friend about how I never have to save for retirement. With night sweats dripping down my forehead, stripping away strands of me I’d spit it out through each word of that ridiculous and solidly solemn sentence, it felt like the most clear-eyed I’d ever been. A great revelation to have at 25: that you’re going to die young.

With health hurdles to be cleared, I’ve been sprawling my legs over them, making the seriousness fade to a simmer. Still, in a perversion of St. Vincent’s “Surgeon”, I’ve spent many a summer on my back since then, waiting for the signal to fade away….or maybe, just even, grow again.

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Ryan Vail’s “Grow” is a breathtaking epitomization of those feelings—if you’re even allowed to call them that. It reminds me a lot of some of my favorite tracks, namely Power Animal’s “Dear My Body” and Deerhunter’s “Helicopter”, both songs with a sharp acuity—like a tapped vein—into the starkness of that feeling of wasting and waiting. And, of course, the anything but desperate grapple out of the hole that disease dug you. Because what Ryan Vail get in their vocal delivery more than most musicians is that there aren’t wails coming from you as you say goodbye, but steady whispers that feel like wounded whimpers.

But the bright spot—the indubitably best part of “Grow”—is the moment ¾ through when the song breaks from the shackles of solipsism by subtly joining Katie Cosgrove’s vocals into the mix. I won’t give away the intensity of the lyricism at that moment, but if it doesn’t affect you….you must not be human.

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