We’ve all had our close calls with the reaper, but how do you confront mortality when you’re always on the move? With their usual humour and brevity, The Dead South tackle one of the toughest subjects in life and thicken the plot with “Tiny Wooden Box”.

"Got a call today, to see if I want to pay
To bring my body home, if things ever did go wrong"

Appearing like a ghost on the horizon, “Tiny Wooden Box” kicks off with a spirited guitar riff and haunting, mournful vocals. The banjo line hums along like a current until it shifts, off kilter, into unsettling territory. As Hilts launches into the first verse, we listen to The Dead South turn the pen on themselves and watch them face their own mortality, and the reaper, in a new video, premiering October 24.

Inspired by a conversation lead singer Nate Hilts had with an insurance agent about a travel policy, “Tiny Wooden Box” centres around the band’s thoughts on death, time and life itself, grounding the song in truth and personal connection. “[It’s] a snapshot of the many overlooked times in our lives where we may have come perilously close to our end, sometimes unknowingly,” says video director Jeremy Chugg.

Earlier this year, he filmed the quartet in the stark landscapes of Drumheller, AB to create a Coen-Bros-esque, satin-satire of comedic close calls. In this (pardon the pun) breathtaking video, Chugg allows the band and the landscape to speak for themselves, seeming to highlight and lighten us up about our own tiny place in the world. “[The scenery] contrasts soaring sunlight shots with claustrophobic darkness, wrestling with the highs and lows of life,” Chugg continues.

"If time heals everything
Then why do I
Still feel this pain"

A little over halfway through the song, the mood, tempo and key change, like the stages of grief. Vacillating between uptempo and downbeat, a chorus of “ooh-ah” booms like heavenly thunder through pickets of banjo, becoming a percussive wave that rolls alongside a chugging acoustic guitar, reminiscent of an eerie “State Trooper”. As Hilts croons, he sounds tortured by the philosophy, “Time heals everything,” adding his own twist on it with an If.

"For all the ones who are gone
We’ve been missing you
These memories are
Holding on"

As the song unwinds and the mood shifts back to upbeat, it’s decidedly Life goes on. Being on the road for most of the year, The Dead South have a lot of time to miss the people they love and to reflect on what’s most important in life. Sweet in sincerity and bittersweet in its truths, “Tiny Wooden Box” has a restrained buoyancy, a soul seeming to emanate from the heart instead of the imagination.

THE HORIZON LINE PLAYLIST:
Listen to this week's Horizon Line playlist inspired by “Tiny Wooden Box" by The Dead South.