Frostbitten Feelings: Richard Tyler Epperson’s “December Night”

Some songs feel like they’ve soaked up the frostbite of a winter night and kept it hidden in their chords—“December Night” by Richard Tyler Epperson is exactly that. This isn’t your neatly packaged holiday radio tune pretending at warmth; it’s the 2 AM conversation with yourself that you wouldn’t dare admit to having.

There’s something deeply unsettling about how Epperson captures emotional isolation here—it’s surgical and strangely tender. The indie-rock instrumentation wears its weariness like an old scarf, wrapping itself tightly around lyrics that don’t romanticize toxicity but instead expose its magnetic, merciless pull. Love as self-destruction. Love as déjà vu you can’t outrun. You want to scream at the narrator, “Run away!” only to realize you’d stay too, wouldn’t you?

There’s a specific push-and-pull in the tension—it reminded me unexpectedly of the Futility Closet podcast, which unearths forgotten moments of history. The same feeling exists here: the way Epperson digs up the rubble of dysfunctional relationships, illuminating the absurdity of clinging to what weighs you down but still somehow feels like home. One lyric twists like barbed wire: you’ll hear it, and something old inside you bruises.

While the music itself is deliberately understated—a rain-cloaked guitar here, a weary drumline there—it never hesitates. No moment is filler. The sound shuffles forward purposefully, like someone walking home in the biting cold after leaving the house of someone they never meant to visit again.

By the song’s end, there’s no resolution—and that feels like the point. “December Night” doesn’t offer clean answers because it knows there aren’t any, only the complex and messy emotions we carry into the next version of ourselves. What lingers isn’t relief; it’s recognition.

You may not “like” this song, but you’ll understand it. Whether that understanding comforts or unravels you, though, is anyone’s guess. What a question to leave behind—a haunting on loop.

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