"No Birds Today"

A polar vortex has held us in the grips of near-zero weather for a week now: a few degrees above, a few degrees below, but decidedly frigid. As I write this, it's sixteen below outside and it's likely our pipes are frozen, which I'm not yet ready to deal with...and I can't escape this song.

 

"No Birds Today" has always transported me to the more desolate parts of eastern Montana or the Dakotas—or, since the Junkies are a Canadian band, perhaps Alberta or Saskatchewan—on the kind of overcast day that makes it seem winter will never let go. Not a glorious sunlit winter day, but foreboding, gloomy, and bleak, when the life on the prairies is hidden away. When the beauty has to be looked for. But it's out there.