Tim Heidecker – Well’s Running Dry Review

Take your work seriously or watch it crumble around you. Tim Heidecker has more than a handful of songs which play with the light intentions of life and the realism which comes from needing to be dedicated and flexible. His career so far has taken him from stage to screen to stage again in a multitude of roles. From Bob Dylan covers to Jordan Peele horrors, stand-up comedy and podcasts. There is no greater achievement than being a multitalented creative. Heidecker proves his envious talent with considerable worth once more on Well Running Dry, the first single from his upcoming album, Slipping Away. We all do at some point. It is relevancy which prevents the slide. Heidecker provides fruitful, contemporary material once more. Approaching his listeners with the usual grace, Well Running Dry is a remarkable accomplishment.  

His country rock turn is a neat swerve. A good and fortunate piece which feels for the writer’s block. There is enough to say just not the words for it. We can frustrate ourselves to no end or we can cobble together what we can, move on to the next piece and hope the words come in hindsight. At least then we can live in quiet frustration rather than enraged, spiralling horror. Heidecker is doing his best to push forward, to keep the well of quality hoisting and moving. The flow is trickier, the routine is both clawed for and stifling. Well Running Dry is a heartbreaking piece for anyone who has sat down with grand ideas and brought up nothing of worth. The words are gone. There are only so many times you can search for synonyms without it feeling like a replication of other works than it is your own. Where did your voice go? 

Biographical wonders from Heidecker are fourth wall breaking. They speak on the taboo subject of artists catching themselves in a state of organised, awkward experiences. Even the greats struggled to find their footing from time to time but a failure to address this is criminal. Heidecker has boldly tackled what more artists should, and he does so with a short and sweet number ahead of his latest album. We are torn apart and kept up late, in feverish sweats, at what we could say if we had the words. But this dedication is harder now than it was before. We were once freed of demands and jobs, the younger self where all there was to worry about was finding something to write about. Now the difficulty comes in piecing it together, balancing it with the experiences needed to craft an interesting documentation of your experiences. 

Heidecker has discarded the expectation of experience in the great wide world for an intimate bash at how the balance of credible work and quality writing is near impossible. When we strike gold, we mine it until our interest is lost or the shine has dimmed. Cool soft rock instrumentals towards the end of this one feel like intentional box-checking for Well Running Dry, a neat example of how a lack of things to say can be a starting point. Coaxing that out of yourself, trying to present something credible in the face of nothing, is trickier than first thought. Heidecker does it with his usual charm, the performance of a man trying to focus when there are so many spinning plates. He is a multi-talented sufferer, but his troubled attempt at focusing on the task at hand is seen in the workaholics of the industry. Damon Albarn falling asleep in the mix of The Ballad of Darren springs to mind. Heidecker is cutting through with a fierce new song, with a familiar and warm sound.