Song for Zula

Matthew Houck wrote “Song for Zula” after a breakup and a breakdown, holed up in a cabin near the Mexican border trying to put himself back together. The song is the sound of a man realizing what love actually is — not the thing the songs say, not the cage he’d been taught to expect, but something larger and more indifferent.

The production keeps the pulse steady the whole way through — synthetic strings, a drum machine that doesn’t accelerate, Houck’s voice cracking just slightly in the high register. It’s music that moves at the pace of a car on an empty two-lane highway after midnight, which is the only pace this song was meant to travel at.