The Timeless Optimism Of Grayson Erhard’s “Driving In The Rain”
Grayson Erhard’s song begins, chugging along like an engine, and then morphs into a melody that sways and whirls, like a hot breeze streaming through a car window. I found his voice willowy and unsettling, which mimics the disconnect between his subject matter: nature and machines. The song’s story is told from the point of […]
The Veneer Of Love In Sean Alan & The True Love Band’s “I Would Not Leave You Blue”
In their song, “I Would Not Leave You Blue,” Sean Alan and The True Love Band explore the difference between people who believe they are in love, and people who actually are. Because of this, the song starts out on a rather dour note. He opens the song describing the relationship of one couple, who […]
Tanners Go Animalistic In “This Crazy”
We are all crazy, it is just some of us are better at hiding it. The singer of the Tanner’s explores this sentiment, describing her fight to keep her animalistic passion contained while she is in a relationship with someone she has completely fallen for. The Tanners sing: In the end I am still an […]
Modern Leisure Tackle Lost Love On “Never Got The Buzz”
The first word of Modern Leisure’s song “Never Got The Buzz” is “Love”. Then there is a beat for a nice inhale. And bitterness spews out in the exhale. The song feels like it is being sung by an awkward, gangly guy in the corner of a party, nursing a warm cup of beer. He […]
The Story Of The Shakes “With Every Moment”
Sean Perry of the Shakes saw death at an intersection and therefore was confronted with two roads he could take: fearing the world or embracing it. He chose to embrace it. That is what the Shakes new song, “With Every Moment “ is about, realizing the temporariness, and fragileness of life, and therefore wanting to […]
The Desperation Of Calming River’s “Haunted Pt.1”
In Calming River’s song “Haunted pt.1 (Fairytales)” we see hills covered in snow, not a pure white snow, but a muddled, mud and soot mixed snow. Trees line the hills, sprouting up like the gnarled hands of a skeleton. When you walk through the trees you resist looking behind them. It is not from the […]
Mini Trees Argue for Intimacy in “Take It Back”
Peering through a living room window you see a family arguing, a disagreement so well-worn it rivals the beat-up furniture scattered around the room. The girl, a teenager, stomps her foot and runs upstairs. She looks as if she has given up. When I listened to the song. “Take It Back” I thought about family […]
Maya Payne – The Story of “Jungle”
If you close your eyes while listening to Maya Payne’s “Jungle” you may imagine a girl running through the forest, light haphazardly illuminating her through holes in the dense canopy. She avoids numerous perils, quicksand, darkness, a tiger, and climbs a tree, emerging through it’s dense branches, surveying the jungle surrounding her. But this is […]
The Breezy Beauty of “When I Get There”
The wind is blowing through your hair, the landscape rolls by your car windows, a blur of greens. In front of you the sun melts away so you move faster, the same urgency propelling you to catch it that made you chase rainbows as a child, knowing there would be a pot of gold waiting […]
The Daunting, Desperate Poetry of Phil Simmond’s “St. Arc, Pt. 1: In the Oak”
Phil Simmond’s St. Arc, Pt. 1: In the Oak is a daunting track. I found it daunting at first because of its length. The song – really, a compilation of songs – stretches out to just over twenty minutes. Upon listening to it, I found that its daunting-ness could be more easily attributed to it […]
