“The page we’ve started on, it’s starting to be / a cage for what we want, too clever to see.” That’s the pivot the whole song turns on, the moment Jakub Tengdahl names what’s actually happening: not a relationship falling apart so much as one that built its own trap out of ambition and self-awareness and called it a life.
Tengdahl is the multi-instrumentalist behind dream pop outfit DEAN FOREVER and It’s a Hoax, a band that’s shared stages with Courtney Barnett, among others. Living Too Late is his solo vehicle, and where those projects have moved through shoegaze and grunge, “Starting To Be” plants itself squarely in the melodic power-pop tradition of Sebadoh and Elliott Smith’s Heatmiser. The guitar has that familiar mid-90s grain, slightly frayed around the edges, and the song moves with the specific restlessness of someone who can’t quite stop picking at something that should probably be left alone.
Lyrically, Tengdahl is circling a person who wanted more than “this simple life could hold” and left, but he’s not exactly blaming them. “What was all that trying for / to run away?” has real bite, but “I don’t know what was real and what’s for show” turns it inward fast. The final verse introduces “the shape you never knew,” some becoming that’s taken over, and “asks for everything and never concedes.” It’s a sharp image for the way ambition eventually stops answering to the person who summoned it.
“It’s fine for now” closes the song twice. It doesn’t sound fine.
B-Side Guys 
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