Alex Bleeker gives us a pair of bipolar breakup songs. Both feature melodies and arrangements that are borderline feel-good folkie. But the words reveal a person who needs to increase his Seroquel dosage.

In “These Days” (2010) we see a man who has dumped his girlfriend and is walking away with a springy step. But like Wile E. Coyote, he has already walked beyond the edge of the cliff. And he will keep walking forward until he looks down and sees only hot air supporting his emotional weight. At which point he will plunge into free fall and create an insignificant poof of dust when he hits bottom.

Words like “I’ve got better things to do than spend my time running after you” sound great in daylight. Wait until you are awake at 3AM, searching the shadows for an excuse to send that text message. You know the one I’m talking about.

“Don’t Look Down” (2013) finds our friend in the role of dumpee, begging the dumper not to forget him, not to forget that once she loved him. “Don’t look back on the way we met … Don’t retract all the things you said.”

Hey I know I was a complete jerk who was always trying to kill you. But remember that time the anvil fell on my head? Remember how I collapsed down like an accordion? God those were fun times! And when you have fulfilled your dream of becoming The World’s Most Self-Actualized Woman and I am still crumpled up in my Desert of Self-Pity, please don’t look down on me. Though I know it will be difficult not to look down on me when you are standing at the top of the cliff and I am lying broken below you as the shadow of that boulder that I launched from the catapult blots out the sun and I await its final, inevitable, crushing blow.

“Don’t Look Down,” on the How Far Away album by Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, is available from Woodsist Records, iTunes, and Amazon.  “These Days,” credited to Alex Bleeker, is available on iTunes.

Visit Alex Bleeker and the Freaks on Blogspot, Facebook, and Twitter.  But watch out for falling anvils.