John Roderick - The Commander Thinks Aloud (saddest song cont.)

My first idea for the saddest song thread was Johnny Cash singing Spiritual. I mean, how can you get sadder than the Man in Black repeating the lyrics "Jesus, I don't want to die alone" over and over? I thought that might put us in a rut of old country dudes singing sad songs though.

John Roderick is the front man for The Long Winters. I found some clips of the full band performing this song, but it was a little tough to make out the lyrics. Unfortunately there's not much to look at here besides Roderick's back. This song attempts to describe the observations made by the Commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia during re-entry. I think Roderick pulls it off in a pretty devastating way, from the joyous line "Can you feel it? We're almost home!" to the grim observation that "The crew compartment is breaking up."