Stick with the noose when you have to.

“You Get To Say Whatever You Want,” the closer from Deleted Scenes‘ new album Lithium Burn, has held a developing place in frontman Dan Scheuerman’s stage performance. Recently, he’s taken to latching onto one member of the standing room audience and screaming in his or her face during the final chorus of the song — which boasts some applicable Occupy imagery, but is not about the movement, the songwriter says.

Previously, Scheuerman told Hear Nebraska he’s ended the song in live spaces by strangling himself with the microphone cord, but strayed from it because it wasn’t as resonant to the core feelings of the song. His final, evocative stage act should be “confrontational, not tortured.”

But alone, on the floor of Slowdown‘s big room, in the hours before Deleted Scenes’ May 1 Omaha show at that venue, Scheuerman reverted to his old standby, self-asphyxiation, as the guitar screeched anguish in kind with Scheuerman’s straining throat.

Is it selling the song’s true essence short? Not in this case. Scheuerman still chooses his victim, his dance partner, his sacrificial citizen. It just happens to be the Love Drunk camera that gets the finger in the face about the futility of everyone having a voice. So it’s you, all of you, with those defeated words, “you get to say whatever you want,” in your ears.

Deleted Scenes is currently on an East Coast tour. Find dates here, and watch them perform “You Get To Say Whatever You Want” below.

audio engineer: matt hova
audio mix: django g-s
edit: django g-s