“When the world around you is starting to fall apart, the most important thing an artist can do is simply refuse to look away.”
James Dunsmuir’s “Breaking Down” is a very bleak, politically aware piece of work which is essentially a lament about the state of America today. It’s a song about a country that is in a state of disarray, in which the values and institutions that we once took for granted are being systematically dismantled. It poses the very real question of whether you just walk away when the country you’re in feels so alien to you. Dunsmuir doesn’t walk away. He’s in it. That’s the heart of the song. “Breaking down all around” is not just a line in the song, it’s the feeling that the song is based on. There’s a sense of helplessness and frustration in it. Despite the gloomy outlook, there’s a belief in the song that the ideals of the country are worth standing up for and that a better future is still possible.
The music underpins that sense of unease without in any way detracting from the message. One of the most striking elements is the use of the Ebow on the electric guitar to produce a very sustained sound which is quite cello-like in quality and has a very slight sitar quality to it. That gives the recording a very mournful feel and allows the instrumental to really reflect the gravity of the subject. It’s a very intimate, very grounded piece in the singer songwriter tradition with Dunsmuir on vocals, guitar and production, and Thom Duel (recording engineer) on the job at Soundtek Studios in Campbell, CA. Duel also plays the electric and the bass guitar, helping to form the very subdued soundscape. There’s a real sense of authenticity in the performance which makes it feel less like a slick political piece and more like a personal reaction to what’s going on. “Breaking Down” sounds like a requiem for the values we’re so frightened of losing, but it’s also a reminder that you don’t have to give up on them.
For Dunsmuir songwriting is a means of documenting the times and getting people to think about the world they live in. He’s very much in the same tradition as the socially conscious songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, John Lennon and Don Henley whose work has always been about the intersection of the individual and the wider world. He’s not really a performer in any sense of the word, he’s a writer and a record maker and that’s what he’s doing here. His wife describes the song as a requiem and that does give it a very mournful quality, but the ending isn’t one of defeat. “Breaking Down” is an affirmation of the belief that we can go on and rebuild and return to the principles that make a country what it is. It’s an uncomfortable record at times and that’s on purpose, but it’s a record that has real weight because it’s unflinching in its approach to the realities of the situation. It’s a very considered piece of music in the context of a country in crisis and it’s a record which speaks to the hope that the best of a nation can survive.
X, Youtube, Instagram, Spotify
“‘Breaking Down’ is more than a song about a country in crisis. It is a reminder that when the values we believe in are threatened, hope begins with the courage to stand and fight for them.”