B-Side Guys

The Crawling Eye’s “You Used To Look At Me” dissects a specific kind of failed relationship: the one where someone mistakes you for a prototype they might assemble themselves into. “You used to look at me, as something you’d like to be,” Regan Meredith sings, and the past tense does all the work. What happens when aspiration curdles into resentment? The song offers its answer through images of erasure and withdrawal.

The verses circle around disappearance. A hipster cuts his hair—”don’t you feel a strange relief, coz you’re not even there”—and the relief isn’t liberation but the dull comfort of no longer being visible enough to disappoint anyone. The narrator is “unfortunately named and criminally blamed by anyone who cared to come along,” suggesting identity as a crime scene where evidence keeps piling up against you. These aren’t grand betrayals; they’re the slow accumulation of being misread by someone who needed you to be someone else.

The three-piece band signed to SWND Records describes themselves as eclectic, recording whatever feels right, and that instinct serves them here. Matthew Witherstone layers guitar, keyboards, and harmonica while Frank Naughton handles production, creating something that slides between alternative rock and indie folk without committing to either. The arrangement stays understated, letting Meredith’s vocals carry the weight of lines like “hopelessly withdrawn, forsaken and forlorn / you don’t need this any more.”

The song’s cruelest observation arrives in the bridge: “Faces in the rain, they mostly look the same / and no reason, ain’t no reason for you to still remain.” Not a dramatic exit but the quiet acknowledgment that staying has become pointless, that whoever this person thought they were looking at stopped existing the moment they projected their aspirations onto someone who never asked to be a mirror.