Couvo - "How It's Always Gonna Go"

Words by Zach Romano

Look At My Records! is happy to present “How It’s Always Gonna Go” the fourth in a series of strong singles from Brooklyn’s Couvo leading up to the September release of The Drinks are Always Free in Purgatory, the band’s second album.

 “How It’s Always Gonna Go” is a slow-building account of the frustrations of making big plans that never really seem to amount to anything. It’s about the need to escape but knowing that even as the route is being planned, the map is more an exercise in bullshitting than something that anyone is ever actually going to follow. Like many of singer and songwriter Josh Couvares’s songs, “How It’s Always Gonna Go” is set in a bar, probably somewhere in the fuzzy period between the fourth beer and last call. Purgatory, indeed.

The track is written in the second person, and Couvares does a neat little trick with the “you” here. In the first verse, “you” seems to be whoever happens to be next to him at the bar, i.e. a stand-in for the listener. As the song goes on, though, it’s revealed that he and whoever he is singing to have a complicated relationship and history, with “you” being a naysayer or perhaps even the one who is at least partially responsible for why it always goes this way in the first place. Despite all of this, Couvares still asks his drinking partner to stick around until closing time, because who wants to be that guy drinking alone? 

Sonically, “How It’s Always Gonna Go” is a straightforward indie rock track, featuring strong vocals, an earworm chorus, and a sneakily groovy bassline. The song starts out restrained and builds steadily in intensity and urgency until all of the frustration being expressed boils over into a communal “Whoa-oh” singalong bridge. Couvares’s voice is high in the mix throughout; he sounds like he is singing to you from a barstool over, and his tenor keeps its refinement even as it almost starts to rasp as the song crescendos.

Couvo is releasing a song a month from The Drinks Are Always Free in Purgatory until the whole album is available in September. In the meantime, check out “How It’s Always Gonna Go” on Couvo’s Bandcamp or on your streaming platform of choice. Be sure to catch the single release show on April 28th at Hart Bar w/ Church Crush, Gabriel Lazaro, Baba Cheavy Chase, and John Cozz. Doors are at 7 p.m. and tickets are $10.

Keep up with Couvo by following him on Instagram.