The first single from Owen Meany’s Batting Stance in nearly four years unfolds like a two-minute comprehensive first-year course in art history. The intensely-layered “He(art) Attack” covers a lot of ground as it name-drops from Escher to Monet, as Daniel Walker pits his lyrical wit against a fine art fallout, as he compares the end of a relationship to a confusing tangle of shape and colour. Naturally, it’s left open to some interpretation.
“‘He(art) Attack’ is a song written about the end of a relationship and the process of trying to find understanding in the midst of confusion,” says Walker. “Day-to-day mundane tasks become unfamiliar as abstract artwork when you are not used to taking on the tasks alone. When the feelings become memories we move on, but the in-between is where the work happens. The twilight-zone of a break-up.”
Walker earnestly throws himself into the language of his subject matter. Over the course of the song “He(art) Attack” picks up so many metaphors and references that the proverbial forest becomes indistinguishable from the trees, peaking as it doubles back on itself with the lyrics: “Yes, I detect patterns in things here, but please, what of some meaning? Oh, what should I interpret from this? And oh, how long should I stare and contort my head?”
We’re no closer to deciphering the tailings of this failed relationship, but in the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” and in the wreckage, we might yet still find a bittersweet beauty. As Walker notes in the song, he is reflecting on the beauty of past mistakes: “Let’s take our joys and transgressions, inspired mistakes, to strokes on a canvas hued truths on display.”