Words by Jason Lee
Photo by Breanna Lynn
A few weeks back I was lucky enough to witness Susannah Joffe performing her pre-release single “Deer in Headlights” (officially released today!) on a beautiful late summer night under the stars on Our Wicked Lady’s rooftop stage (playing at a Deli showcase no less!) where she introduced the song (spoiler alert!) as being sung from the perspective of roadkill…
…and while you’d maybe expect a song addressing such a morbid theme to be a gravel-voiced death metal screed along the lines of Cannibal Corpse’s “Skull Full of Maggots” or “Hammer Smashed Face” what we got here instead is more along the lines of the dreamily introspective, highly melodic, intermittently grungy indiepop of artists like Soccer Mommy, Ethel Cain, Del Water Gap, or Feeble Little Horses who are all fittingly name-checked in Susannah’s official press release…
…and indeed “Deer in Headlights” opens like it’s waking up from a dream half-recalled in medias res with a lingering image of a startled deer staring down the song’s titular vehicular beacons with Susannah languidly declaiming the song’s opening lines: “someone’s red Chevy coming headfirst at 3 am / the moon looks dimmer as the headlights start closing in”…
…but first there’s a brief instrumental intro with a repeated two-note motif that lands the first time around on a wavering upper-register pitch like an unresolved musical question asked with a lingering air of uncertainty but which then the second time around drops down and resolves on a clear-toned, lower-register note sounding like the sealing of one’s fate all of which unfolds in the span of a few seconds…
…capturing what it must feel like to be the deer in question as it jerks up it’s head to witness twenty-five tons of hardened steel speeding headlong towards its delicate frame—registering confusion and uncertainty at first, followed moments later by a fateful grisly fate lest it jumps out of the way just in time—and of course the fuller version of the song title’s coloquialism is “frozen like a deer in the headlights” and what Susannah Joffe so ably communicates here isn’t the resulting carnage of this scenario but rather the state of suspended animation felt just before the moment of impact…
…and you know how people say that when an animal—whether deer or human being—suddenly comprehends its imminent end arriving in a matter of seconds if not a split-second how that tiny window of time unfolding in slow-motion into what feels like several minutes at least (perfectly suited to the classic three-and-a-half minute pop song!) with your “life flashing before your eyes” and that’s just what “Deer in Headlights” feels like—an extended endorphin rush—minus the part where you get mowed down by some idiot’s Jeep Grand Cherokee thankfully…
…gradually mounting in tension as the song vacillates between passages of tension-filled hushed reverie supported by spiderwebs of acoustic guitar and slow-motion squalls of pristine power chords played on electric guitar with Susannah’s vocals swathed in ever building layers of ghostly reverb as the titular deer appears to shuffle off this mortal coil in spine-tingling fashion for the song’s final 45 seconds her floating phonations rising up to the sky…
…and lest one think the song depicts what’s merely a random accident not to end on a down note cuz it’s a beautiful song but there’s a more malevolent subtext at work where the vehicle in question—no doubt an obnoxiously and needlessly oversized pickup or SUV—is meant to represent cuz the unseen driver “want[s] to hang me as [a] trophy” with “antlers twisted” even as she entreats the driver to “forgive me for staining these new leather seats” and *hello* we’re talking automobile-as-patriarchy which makes a lot of sense actually…
…with vehicles in our great U.S. of A. getting absurdly bigger and bigger year after year—more deadly both in terms of collisions and carbon footprints—as a seeming antidote to the American male’s crisis of masculinity and as Susannah herself puts it the song’s subtext is meant as a “wake up call’ that “critiques the treatment of women in our society and exposes the dark underbelly of Christian nationalism” so ya better strap on that seatbelt and keep your eyes peeled cuz you’ll rightfully be damned to hell if you obliterate the doe-eyed innocence of a deer in your headlights…
*********
Video stills above from a short film made by @workingxholiday
Makeup by @evanpow3ll
Song produced by @bentcoleman
Cover art credits:
Drawing and edit by @susanna.hjoffe
Photographer: Breanna Lynn @breannalynn.gif
Creative Director: Breanna Lynn @breannalynn.gif
Stylist: WAX @rachelwaxenberg
BTS: Jade Moscoe @jadevisions
Dress: vintage @screamingmimis
Netta vest: @amalyameira