THIS WEEK IN LUGGAGE NARRATIVES~!…
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[5.71]
Brad Shoup: Having your shit already packed is pretty standard. But Sebastian makes the suitcase a kind of third party to the rupture… as she packs the bag, the love story transfers from her to the case. Since she could have taken the opportunity to ride solo, letting him leave becomes a kind of final mercy, along with letting him pawn her princess cut (a nice extraneous detail). The track’s efficient, with Edge-style rhythm guitar and a nagging piano motif It sounds a bit like Lee Ann’s “Ashes By Now,” actually. Sebastian’s the reason for admission: locating calm and anger and omniscience in a compact voice.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Lacking the pipes or talent for malice of a Miranda Lambert, she settles for an okay Martina McBride-esque simmer with a hint of chalk. She almost enlivens a song smothered by an arrangement of unimpeachable banality.
[6]
Iain Mew: I could complain about the overdramatic music and the way that Gwen Sebastian skips too quickly on after the line about her love not having a lifetime guarantee like the suitcase, like she was embarrassed of the joke but not enough to take it out. The real issue, though, is in the narrative structure, which provides a series of dramatic revelations each less dramatic than the last, to the point where, by the end, the specific details of holidays and wedding gifts are required to take on great significance. No wonder the song can’t take the weight of the music.
[4]
Anthony Easton: This could have been sung by Tammy during one of her fallow periods without George Jones. I started to just enjoy the details: how she extends vowels and clips the g’s on certain verbs; Cancun, princess-cut ring; the fantastic line “the screen door, guilty feeling”; etc.; but for some reason, the couplet “the one the momma gave us on our wedding day/the one we took last summer to LA” just pole-axes me. It gives me a complete lack of hope.
[7]
John Seroff: As a hook, an image to craft a song around, or as a clunky pair of syllables, the word “Suitcase” is inherently and vocally boring. There’s nothing sexy or curious or engaging about suitcases. Same for linoleum. Or HDMI cables. Or horseradish. Or Sebastian’s bargain-basement Dolly Parton twang. I’m just saying that if you want to frame an end-of-the-relationship song around packing up your beau’s stuff, put it all in the box on the left or call Tyrone but please do not linger on the warranty of your shared luggage or imagine what the eponymous suitcase would say if it could talk. A breakup is awkward enough without a song that forces me to question how a wedding ring “sinks” in a suitcase or where the interior quotation marks are intended to fall in the phrase “the what the hell was I thinking marrying you mistake.” I’m inclined to think this one’s not worth unpacking.
[4]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Pleasant enough but, post-first verse, could do with being packed in somewhat (yuk yuk yuk).
[6]
Edward Okulicz: The last few lines are maybe one or two details too many, adding weight to a story that was already quite adequately resolved. But “Suitcase” works despite its mundanity-dressed-as-heartbreak lyrics because of a really smart, matter-of-fact vocal performance. Sebastian spits out the words that talk about the infidelity in the narrative (“lipstick” and “screen door”) like missiles, and infuses words like “hallway” that symbolise the ruptured domesticity with hurt tenderness.
[6]