CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of suicide, self harm, foul language. This review is super personal and get super dark, if you don’t want that I don’t blame you.
There are times when an album comes to you and doesn’t leave much of an impact on first listen, it lingers in your mind over time and eventually comes back to the forefront, like it never left. Then there are times when music hits you, like an oncoming semi truck, the sheer force of it enough to separate every part of your mind to put it back together with patches made of itself. In Case I Make It is that album. I do this silly list where I have 25 albums that are of great importance to me, and while this one isn’t quite at number one it is still maybe the best thing on the list, and the one that had the most impact on me when I first listened to it.
Fuck, listening to this while I type is making me tear up. Even still, after all that time.
The second half of 2023 was not fun. I was in a new major at school, my third, after failing candidacy. My friend group was starting to fracture, deep cracks in the foundation coming to fruition. I was in a crap apartment where my roommates would yell homophobic slurs at the TV all night, football or hockey or baseball or whatever. The biggest thing was losing my girlfriend at the time. The details are too many, and a public site isn’t the place to post private affairs, but it ended with her attempting to take her own life. She didn’t, thank god, but it was really rough. She wouldn’t be the last friend I almost lost to suicide that year. On top of all of that, the family dog passed while I was away at college, I hadn’t seen her in months and there she was, dying with a toy I gave her cuddled up next to her. It was pretty shit all around.
In Case I Make It is an album from a healing soul. It tackles the artists relationship to his public perception, the music he’s made, his own struggles with mental health, addiction to alcohol, and all sorts of other things. The whole thing hit me, I can remember doing dishes while Becoming the Lastnames played and breaking down then and there. It happened more than once, with a lot of these songs. This album was like something I could hold close while I tried to cry out all the sad, the terrible thoughts brewing inside me. It got really bad one day, and I’m not gonna say this album saved me or anything like that but it was definitely on my mind.
I feel like In Case I Make It is about healing. It’s about changing destructive habits and looking back at the you that you once were, not with outright hatred but with thoughtful criticism. I hate the me that I was at that time, still having to force a smile and go to classes and work and see friends and not think about spilling my own blood just so someone would see and comfort me and tell me that it’ll all be ok. Because it would all be ok, right? More than half a year has passed, and things did get better thankfully. I have new friends, support networks, people I can trust to talk to about these thoughts if they ever come back. I healed. I don’t hate that me from last year, I know why she felt those ways and in the hell she was going through, I don’t blame her. She pushed through even though she was so tired, just long enough to pass the torch on to me, and I love her for that.
If Will Wood never puts out another song again, I’m ok with that. I don’t know if he needs to do this anymore. I’d love to hear something new but I don’t need it, not really. The Normal Album, In Case I Make It, and even his Tapeworms stuff to an extent are these entities I associate with points in my life, with the things I was going through at the time. I own this album on CD, that CD and the digital files will always be there in case I need a reminder of what I went through, what I survived. If you feel like the future isn’t worth it, I promise you it is. Please talk to someone, seek the help you need, don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. It does get better with time, I promise you.
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