Track Listing

Fourteen tracks across four acts. The arc moves chronologically through Margot's life — from leaving home to a reckoning with everything that narrowed it.

Act 1 — The World Opens

1. Today — Leaving home. A loving mother who prepared you for this day. She'll miss you, but she got you ready. The album opens with departure — not sadness, but readiness.

2. Find My Way — The hard cycles of a musician's touring life on a relationship. Home, away, home, away — and what it costs. The price of the life Margot chose before she knew what it would cost.

3. Nightly — A traveling musician falls in love with flyover country. Small-town America through the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time. The charm is real. The adventure is real. The road is open.

Act 2 — Love and Loss

4. Someday — A girl from elementary school was kidnapped and never found. The family's unresolved pain of not knowing. The words should be unintelligible — the grief is beyond language. This is the first shadow in the album.

5. All I Need to Know — First love around eighteen. The innocence of realizing love isn't just a feeling — it's defining. Before you know what it costs, before you see the patterns.

6. 23 — Second love, and already jaded. You see the warning signs you missed the first time. No path to success, but you'd give anything to make it work. The disillusionment is already setting in.

Act 3 — The World Closes In

7. Throwing Shade — People who intentionally misunderstand each other. Choosing the worst interpretation. We just want to be loved, but we'd rather be right than be known. The album's commentary on how communication breaks down.

8. Heroes & Apathy — The emotional peak of the album. Taking care of a dying mother — bed baths, changing diapers. She leaves you her house. After she passes, the family shows up demanding their share. Love and betrayal in the same breath.

9. Wasted Dreams — The realization that parenthood is special. The "wasted" time playing kids' games is actually the most important time of everyone's life. What seems frivolous is what your kids will remember. A grace note after the devastation of track 8.

Act 4 — Reckoning

10. Run Away — Growing up religious, then walking away. Non-belief. The church people who think you owe them, who think you'd be nothing without them. Punk heart, but also feeling sorry for them. Anger and compassion, unresolved.

11. You Wonder — A couple growing apart, living double lives. They don't know each other anymore. Written after binge-watching Breaking Bad. The quiet horror of realizing the person next to you is a stranger.

12. Fighting Alone — Realizing your rebellion was manufactured. You were mad at what you were told to be mad at. One person in your life was never swayed by politics or religion. Wishing you could be more like them. The hardest reckoning isn't with others — it's with yourself.

13. Unbound — A lifelong friend — the one you went to church with — has cancer. They're your age. Death comes for everyone. How do you say goodbye when the person is still standing in front of you?

14. When Everything Was Loud — The only song Joan wrote from scratch, built from Margot's conversation. Looking over the events of your life and realizing things don't need to be this constrictive. You can push back. You can find your individuality. The album doesn't end with answers — it ends with eyes open.

Bonus Track

Heroes & Apathy (Full Band) — The same song, unrecognizable. The full band — Leigh driving the bass, Kid Fisto unleashed, Arc's electronics fighting to keep up. The moment they discovered what happens when they stop being careful. Not a replacement for the album version — an addition. The proof that restraint was a choice, not a limitation.