Hear Vagabon’s Candid Lovesong “Cold Apartment”

The typical American will move about 12 times times in their life, and the pain of packing and unpacking everything never gets any easier. Lætitia Tamko (aka Vagabon) moved to New York City from Cameroon as a teenager, and she’s chronicled her struggles with finding community and love in the dizzying metropolis through subtle, often heartrending songs of booming indie rock. “Cold Apartment,” a highlight from her debut LP, Infinite Worlds, is a candid look at the moments that haunt old homes and old loves. It opens up with her distinctive tenor, which immediately dissolves distraction. Her words, at first quiet, defeated, and reflective—“I know it’s my fault/I gave up on everything and I see you happy”—slowly building up in volume and emotion. But right as the song seems like it’s moving towards something triumphant, Tamko offers a sobering vision: “We sit on my cold apartment floor/Where we thought we would stay in love.” In the hands of someone else, those lines could be clumsy, but she is able to perfectly evoke how painful it is to hold onto places and moments that are coming to their end. As she does, you feel that frigid floor, that empty apartment.

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