Unrequited love sucks, but it’s produced an inordinate number of excellent rock songs. Amanda X’s new single, “Juniper,” initiates like some of the best, with a cinematic close encounter: “Saw you from the balcony, but you never looked down.” The song unravels to reveal new complexities throughout, but that opening moment recalls one of the most inimitably great, and kind of sappy, ballads ever written by Paul Westerberg. “Skyway” appears toward the end of the Replacements’ 1987 album Pleased To Meet Me and is a delicate piece of acoustic plucking that strays from the aesthetic of its surrounding tracks. Westerberg’s narrator watches someone adoringly from below a skyway, “high above the busy little one way,” and wishes that they were down on earth next to him. “Juniper” is not so much lovelorn as it is angry, pleading, encapsulating the unending frustration that comes with trying to bridge the space between yourself and the other. Brooklyn Vegan announced that the song will be released on a forthcoming two-song EP due out this coming fall; listen and check out Amanda X’s tour dates with Protomartyr below.

Tour dates with Protomartyr:

10/18 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s
10/20 Raleigh, NC @ King’s Barcade
10/21 Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
10/22 Nashville, TN @ Stone Fox
10/23 Bloomington, IN @ Blockhouse
10/24 Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
10/25 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall

Hundreds And Thousands is out 9/22 via Self Aware Records. Preorder it here.