What it's about: An irresistable urge I have to share the music and, particularly, lyrics that I love. It's about spreading the word on some of the songwriters and artists I stumble upon who may go under the radar or I feel are underrated. I love the search, and promoting what I find, - these artists make it so rewarding. What to expect: I love my rock music, acoustic and folk but I've found it's often the lyrics that will make me buy a song and listen to it again and again I enjoy playing music myself, with a very talented friend of mine: https://soundcloud.com/trinorthern This is a sister blog to: theliterarytree.blogspot.com
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I was lucky to see Josh Doyle live for the third time last month and, very excitingly, he premiered some new material (and I was told there is more to come!). He did two brilliant covers in his set, a great rendition of The 59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem and Bed of Roses by Bon Jovi and then played a mixture of old and new.
People going to the gigs had a chance to pick up the new music early and it’s sounding really good. Here’s a whistle-stop tour and my thoughts;
‘Lighthouse’
This is a great opener and one of the stand-outs. It has a stirring cello opening which sets the mood and complements the acoustic guitar. There are so many movements and stages to this song, each with little modifications and added layers or riffs to drive it forward. It swells into a storm of cello, vocal and guitar towards its final stages, encapsulating the frustration and desolation in the lyrics.
‘I’m a modern man / in the modern times / and the rules have changed / and the gods have died’
‘Locust Years’
This is a smoky country-western-Americana offering bursting with atmosphere and the build-up of years of hardship in the lyrics.
‘I went to work and I sold them my days / yeah I sold my life for pay / I saw the sun rise high and then back beneath the sky / and I lost another day’
It’s earthy and intense and possessed (in the best way).
‘Through the Night’
This is another stand-out, with a more melancholy sound and a beautiful, yearning guitar progression. Lyrically, it’s got similar themes to it’s predecessor in a strong sense of disillusionment with the modern world, particularly working culture and capitalism.
‘Made it through another working week / can’t remember a thing I did / the years will hit you like a bus / wake up and you’re not a kid’
It’s about feeling lost and looking for something to get you through in a culture where you feel alienated. Where your ‘heart is open wide’ but there’s nothing for it to latch onto and it feels futile.
‘You’re left holding the cocktail glass / hoping that it hits you fast’
I really like the musical experimentation and ambition in these five tracks. ‘Strange World’ has an incredible, psychedelic guitar solo in it’s final section - it goes insane and you just need to turn it up and get lost in it. It might not be as lyrics-led as the others but the music and the vocal are both brilliant.
This CD wraps up with the stripped back, more romantic tones of ‘Keep My Mind’ which is a perfect musical antidote to ‘Strange World’.
If these five songs are anything to go by, then I’m really excited for even more from Josh. I rate him as one of the best songwriters out there and he’s a great musician and performer too. He’s very down-to-earth and involved, and the gigs are intimate and personal each time. All his songs have an impact and mean different things to different people in the room at his gigs, and it’s a really special atmosphere. I’ll definitely be there if he tours again over here and will keep supporting. His lyrics reflect on life in the modern world with a level of introspection and outward-perception that is so hard to find these days.
Follow Josh here.
#Josh Doyle#gig#review#new music#dum dums#acoustic#folk#country#rock#the islington#concert#guitar#cello#lyrics
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Go and see Swiss Army Man. It’s brilliant. It’s crazy, but brilliant and so well acted and made.
This is a song from the soundtrack, which I adore. I loved the music in this film - it’s so original, mostly acapella and feels so euphoric. I love the subtle humour in the songs too - ‘all we ever needed was a montage...’
I love working and running to this soundtrack. Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe are both excellent all-round and it’s just such an interesting project which has more levels than you think. I guess it’s maybe ultimately about how holding everything in can drive you a little crazy and you need to find ways of letting go and being creative and imaginative.
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Started listening to Taking Back Sunday again and this song is my stand-out so far - I just love it’s sound. It’s not particularly the lyrics with this one. The music video is very graphic and shows people very indifferent to someone’s very visible suffering. It kind of works as a metaphor for all sorts of internal struggles which people might not see or recognise - and also those who would turn their heads away at those in need.
Like you can’t look back because then you’d go crazy at all the suffering around you and people who need help - so you drive it away with drink and hedonism and sometimes self-destructive tendencies. If you don’t look back, you can convince yourself that all the bad stuff isn’t there or doesn’t exist.
It’s called ‘You Can’t Look Back’ and it’s from their new album Tidal Wave.
#taking back sunday#you can't look back#tidal wave#new song#review#lyrics#new release#new album#music#rock
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Just a really great rock song from the new The Pretty Reckless album (Who You Selling For). I’m excited because I just got tickets to see them in London in January. Taylor Momsen has one of the best female rock vocals I’ve ever heard.
‘On my walls I scrawl my gods Don't care what happens when I die As long as I'm alive All I wanna do is rock, rock, rock!’
#the pretty reckless#london#tour#who you selling for#take me down#rock#metal#music#lyrics#female rock#vocal#review#new song
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This is my favourite so far from the new Feeder album (All Bright Electric). It’s called ‘Another Day on Earth’ and just musically evokes those four words in every way possible. It’s sometimes tired, sometimes yearning, sometimes hopeful, sometimes frightened and wild. It’s wonderfully subtle and resolves with the feeling that the only way to make sense of our condition on earth is to share it
‘Lay beside me’ / ‘Without you there is nothing’ / ‘the sense that we’re alone’
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Another gem from Everything Must Go (it’s the 20 year anniversary of this album). This song, I think, is meant to be about escapism- escaping pain and getting as far away as you can. That’s what Australia represents.
This was also in the aftermath of Richey’s disappearance and the mystery surrounding it - so there’s actually a lot of pain and confusion in this song - you can hear lots of different things in it.
The lyrics are really heart-wrenching for those who know the band:
"I want to fly and run till it hurts Sleep for a while and speak no words in Australia”
It’s always been a little funny how songs like this and Design For Life - people can come to and think they’re hedonist albums about holidays and getting drunk - but in reality they’re something so different and so profound. That’s why I love this band so much.
#richey edwards#nicky wire#australia#everything must go#anniversary#song recommendation#review#lyrics#music#rock
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Doesn’t this song have one of the best solo-intros ever? Only started listening to it again because I’m preparing for the Manics’ Everything Must Go tour later this year! The guitar in this song is just immense.
Alot of fans have speculated that this song is Nicky writing about his and Richey’s friendships and how they were always helping each other through illness and problems but this isn’t confirmed. Others have said Nicky wrote it about friends generally growing apart. I just can’t wait to see it live - it looks incredible!
“What's the point in always looking back When all you see is more and more junk It was no surface but all feeling Maybe at the time it felt like dreaming”
#manic street preachers#nicky#richey#everything must go#no surface all feeling#song recommendation#live#lyrics
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This is just a great feel-good song I stumbled upon early this year. The band are called The Riptide Movement and I’ll definitely be following them. The lyrics are simple but really effective and uplifting and it’s a lot of fun to play on guitar!
“I know you feel lost I know you feel scared I know you feel down I'm with you every step of the way tomorrow's a new day It all works out It all works out It all works out It all works out”
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Thank you to Billy Lockett for bringing me back to this blog, even though I’ve been manically busy with work and life. What a lovely song to capture a moment. I had to post about it because Billy truly deserves success. He is exceptionally talented and puts his heart and soul into his music. His voice in this song gave me goosebumps - it can be silky, smooth and soulful and then just soars into a heartbreaking falsetto. There’s a real melancholy touch to this song but it’s so beautiful and arresting. Give it a listen - Billy’s new EP is coming soon.
‘I’ll burn it down... build it up better / sometimes it hurts, to forget the past’
Twitter: @billylockett
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I’m a sucker for some of Pink’s darker and more personal songs. She’s a good writer and a great and honest performer. I love some of those lesser known tracks like ‘Runaway’, ‘It’s All Your Fault’, ‘Ave Mary A’, ‘Beam Me Up’, ‘Crystal Ball’ etc. and this.
I have a lot of respect for her- which I woke up to when I was invited by one of my best friends to see her in concert. Back then, I was only aware of the Pink you see in ‘Don’t Let Me Get Me’, ‘U + Ur Hand’ and so on - the rebel queen of pop. I love that she’s now also making music with Dallas Green and continuing to be all the amazing things she is.
It’s this song though, ‘The Great Escape’ which has helped me through some of the last few weeks. The lyrics are pretty real and self-explanatory, I guess they’re just honest and emotional - and I believe her when she sings them:
‘And you feel too much / and you don’t know how long you’re gonna last’
‘But everyone you know is trying to smooth it over / Like you’re trying to scream underwater’
‘But I won’t let you make the great escape, / I’m never gonna watch you checking out of this place / I’m not gonna lose you / cause the passion and pain / are gonna keep you alive someday’
‘I feel like I could wave my fist in front of your face / and you wouldn’t flinch or even feel a thing’
There’s something comforting in her voice, accompanied simply by the soft tones of the piano. Her live performances are always supreme and intimate. I think this song is important, and it’s certainly important to me - so kudos to Pink. She sings the words people need to hear sometimes and captures some of the quiet pains of the sensitive.
‘
#the great escape#pink#review#lyrics#the truth about love#p!nk#alecia moore#dallas green#music#folk#pop#ballad#piano
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I cannot wait for The Tallest Man on Earth’s (maybe it’s the tall thing we share) new album - I’ve had this song, ‘Sagres’, on repeat. It’s got such a bittersweet melody with more layers of instrumentation than he usually uses. The strings sounds like they’re quaking with emotion and the lyrics are heartfelt poetry.
In one interview Matsson said the title was deliberately ambiguous because this record is so personal and so tricky to talk about - but that it was partially inspired by the Portuguese town, once thought to be the end of the world.
There’s so much about life in this song, evoking the atmosphere of that cliff edge over the unknown - ‘...little screams into the wonder / and a wild set of rides, come on...’
The melancholy is palpable in those first verses especially - ‘and this sadness, I suppose / is going to hold me to the ground / where I’m forced to find the still / in a place where you won’t be around’, there’s a sense of being forced to find a way to exist on your own, and be self sufficient and okay.
‘Was I ever going to be / more than these savages in me? / as they will sing into the silence / just to silence tears / now what is left in here? / ... It’s just all this fucking doubt’
The pause that accompanies that last line increases its impact - the gravity of it gives me shivers. The idea of doubt fits with everything said about Sagres as a place, an end point for knowledge - but it also paves the roads of life for anyone who is thoughtful and self-aware, or confronting anything emotional, and that’s what makes this song great.
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Kintsugi is Death Cab For Cutie’s most recent album and I wanted to talk about three songs from it - mainly for the lyrics. I love the album title - it is apparently a type of Japanese art based on the philosophy of broken things not being disguised, and wearing their breakage as part of their history. I would say that album as a whole is pretty haunting, perhaps also quite dark and self-indulgent but with similar characteristics to their previous work.
Black Sun:
This is the lead single and it’s intro riff sounds a little like a stripped down version of ‘Decode’ by Paramore. It’s very intense, with a pulsing beat in the chorus and light variations throughout to stop it getting too melodically monotonous.
‘There is an answer in a question / And there is hope within despair / And there is beauty in a failure / And there are depths beyond compare’ and ‘There’s a dumpster in the driveway / Of all the plans that came undone’
The lyrics tap into that concept of kintsugi, finding beauty in a ‘failure’ or a ‘dumpster’.
You’ve Haunted Me All My Life:
This is the epitome of haunting - it’s so intensely melancholy. The acoustic tone is so deep and pronounced. It has pain etched into every note - as Gibbard sings, ‘you are the mistress I can’t make my wife ... You’ve haunted me all my life / You’re always out of reach when I’m in pursuit’
But the most heartbreaking line is definitely this one: ‘And there’s a flaw in my heart’s design / For I keep trying to make you mine’
Everything’s A Ceiling:
This has a wildly different Owl City electronic vibe to it. But it’s not a break from the sadness: ‘Cause when you’re so far below the floor, everything’s a ceiling ... But when you climbed out you pulled the ladder and it left me stranded’.
This is my favourite line: ‘The only stars I see in the sky, they don’t move me / Cause they’ve all been dead for millions of years, they’re just light diffusing’
It’s a little piece of cosmic insight which cements the existential imagery in the song.
Lyrically, I think there’s a lot of poetry to be found on the record. Melodically - it can get a bit draining.
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Striking Matches’ debut album is out now in the UK and is well worth a listen. They are a rootsy blend of country, rock and blues and have been featured on Nashville. They are both lead guitarists, with ample licks, slides and solos distributed evenly between them.
‘Missing You Tonight’ is one of my favourites with its slow-burning atmosphere and simple, evocative lyrics. It captures the tension and pull of missing someone, just wanting to hear their voice but not wanting to push them away: ‘Don’t hang up / I just wanted to hear your voice ... I don’t want to start a fire / I don’t want to start a fight / I was just missing you tonight’ and ‘Forgive me if I come on too strong / I really don’t mean to’
Find them here: http://www.strikingmatches.com/, give their album Nothing But The Silence a listen and check out their YouTube
#striking matches#nashville#nothing but the silence#new album#review#missing you tonight#country#rock#blues#guitar
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"My idea of love comes from / A childhood glimpse of pornography / Though there is no true love / Just a finely tuned jealousy" - Life Becoming a Landslide
I wanted to give this song it's own post because I'm kind of obsessed with it at the moment. It's quite operatic, so different to The Holy Bible - it incorporates acoustic riffs, heavier metal grinds and operatic rock ballad choruses. All this reflects the central crises in the lyrics - a kind of confusion of conflicting ideas and a difficult relationship with human life and one's own being. It's Richey's meditation on love and what love is - his own warped perspective. Love as the violence of childbirth, love as the strange, performative, often abusive, always warping, orchestration of pornography. For me, it's about the difficulty to connect and keep in mind what's real - to feel divorced and disassociated from your own feelings and the world around you. Everything seems frightening and untrustworthy.
The imagery in the first two lines is so powerful:
"Childbirth tears upon her muscle / very first second a screaming icon"
It captures the raw, visceral violence which accompanies a baby into the world. It's strange ululation - as if it intuits it's own condition and all of the universe and life and death in that first moment. It makes me think of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and those lines: 'The horror! The horror!'. Like it's saying, 'I didn't ask for this'. That first confusion can be both wondrous and sad depending on how you look at it. The sparse acoustic accompaniment to these lines makes them more chilling.
Then there's Edwards' autobiographical lines on his first 'glimpse of pornography' and how he couldn't relate to 'love' afterwards. It changes you and you may not even realise. Like the world would never be the same again. As a child, he ran outside to be sick afterwards. Life becomes a landslide, a frightening mess that you can't control and threatens to overwhelm the sensitive and the perceptive.
"There is no true love / just a finely tuned jealousy" is a brilliant way of putting it. People's desire to own, domesticate and lay claims upon each other, divorced from man's natural animalistic and desirous nature - was difficult for Richards to reconcile. So much seems false and contradictory.
"I don't wanna be a man", Bradfield screams. Rewards become less satisfying as you grow up, things only seem to get more false and a sense of complacency sets in. Innocence is lost but so is so much more. It's not necessarily about wanting to change gender but simply to stay in a realm where truth is easier to find.
I've had this song on repeat for days, having recently re-listened to Gold Against the Soul. It's tragic and heart-breaking but it's honest and there's so much to relate to and recognise in it. It's a true moment of Richey genius - a majestic piece.
#gold against the soul#life becoming a landslide#the manic street preachers#manics#richey edwards#nicky wire#james dean bradfield#pornography#lyrics#philosophy#human nature#recommendation
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The first image is by http://roschmchen.deviantart.com/.
Today marks twenty years since Richey Edwards disappeared so I wanted to do a post celebrating his art, which very much lives on and continues to influence the Manic Street Preachers today. I can't imagine how painful it must be for his family and bandmates - having no closure about what happened to Richey but I hope he is out there somewhere, finally happy. Special mention must go to his sister Rachael who is working with Missing People charities.
Some months ago I was having a conversation with my brother about the Manics and I was saying how after listening to them, other bands can seem cheap in comparison - and he said something along the lines of the problem being that Richey makes most people seem cheap too, that's part of great art and literature. That stuck with me. I've read numerous biographies of the Manics, most recently Simon Price's and there are small things about Richey that just amaze me. I guess that was part of his magic - so many people who never knew him, who maybe don't know the real Richey, gain so much from his honesty and feel connected to each other and the words because of it. I guess I recognise things in his hyper-sensitivity, his perceptiveness, and his ambition. How he could barely play guitar but picked one up and taught himself just to be part of the whole thing. Richey's story is complex, and he's no hero (in the sense that he had many problems and is not someone to idolise or copy), but he is an artist, a thinker and a human being who made art of pain and affected many - he wrote fearlessly and brutally.
“People say to the mentally ill, ‘Youknow so many people think the world of you.’ But when they don’t likethemselves they don’t notice anything. They don’t care about what people think of them. When you hate yourself, whatever people say it doesn’t make sense. ‘Why do they like me? Why do they care about me?’ Because you don’t care about yourself at all.” ― Richey Edwards
NME's Emily Mackay wrote a brilliant piece on the anniversary of The Holy Bible: 'people sometimes think of 'The Holy Bible as an album for wallowers in teen angst. It's the exact opposite. Listening to '4st 7lb'... was not like being seen. It was like being seen through.' It's not self-pity or self-indulgence, it draws links between personal and structural pain and injustices - it's harshly self-critical - it shines a light and makes you look. It's brilliantly jumbled and imperfect. Look. Think.
To mark today I just want to share some of my favourite lyrics from Richey's time with the Manics, some of them are his alone and some are his/Nicky's. I only gathered a few (because of time constraints) and most are from those first three albums before his disappearance. In no particular order:
1. 'The more you own, the more you are / Lonelier with cheap desire' - NATWEST - BARCLAYS - MIDLANDS - LLOYDS
2. 'Culture sucks down words / itemise loathing and feed yourself smiles ... under neon loneliness motorcycle emptiness ... life lies a slow suicide / orthodox dreams and symbolic myths / from feudal serf to spender / this wonderful world of purchase power / just like lungs sucking on air / survival's natural as sorrow' - Motorcycle Emptiness - the ultimate anthem of emptiness in society.
3. 'We are not your sinners / our voices are for real' - You Love Us - I chose this because of the band's, and especially Richey's, eagerness to show they were for real - or 4real.
4. 'Rain down alienation / leave this country' - Love's Sweet Exile
5. 'Loveless slavery, lips kissing empty / dress your life in loathing / breaking your mind by Barbie doll futility / little baby nothing / sexually free you're made-up to break up / assassinated beauty ... you are pure, you are snow / we are the useless sluts that they mould ... culture, alienation, boredom and despair' - Little Baby Nothing - this song concerns the sexual exploitation of women and also what pornography etc. can do to the person watching it - the love/hate sensation - part disgust, part enjoyment. Former porn star Traci Lords features.
6. 'I write this alone in my bed / I've poisoned every room in the house / the place is quiet and so alone / pretend there's something worth waiting for / There's nothing nice in my head / the adult world took it all away / wake up with the same spit in my mouth / cannot tell if it's real or not ... outside open mouthed crowds / pass each other as if they're drugged / down pale corridors of routine ... till the world means less and less / words are never enough / just cheap tarnished glitter / I try and walk in a straight line / an imitation of dignity / from despair to where' - From Despair to Where - one of my favourites - captures a coming-of-age apathy and disappointment.
7. 'I am just a petrified cry / wheeled out once a year; a cenotaph souvenir' - La Tristessa Durera - concerns the idea that war heroes and remembrance are wheeled out for one day a year and then swept away again.
8. 'My idea of love comes from / a childhood glimpse of pornography / though there is no true love / just a finely tuned jealousy' - Life Becoming a Landslide - really interesting lyric - an insight again into what porn and sexual exploitation can do to those who witness it or are a part of it.
9. 'There is no part of my body that has not been used ... Everyone I've loved or hated always seems to leave ... and in these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything' - Yes - another concerning exploitation, prostitution and everything being 'for sale'.
10. 'Images of perfection, suntan and napalm' ... 'your idols speak so much of the abyss / yet your morals only run as deep as the surface ... Cool - groovy - morning - fine (if white) / Tipper Gore was a friend of mine (America) / I love a free country (told the truth) / the stars and stripes and an apple for mummy (for one day) / Conservatives say: there ain't no black in the Union Jack / Democrats say: there ain't enough white in the stars and stripes' - Ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayitsworldwouldfallapart - mocking a culture - the dominant culture - which the band sees as the emptiest of all.
11. 'I want to be so skinny that I rot from view / I want to walk in the snow / and not leave a footprint / I want to walk in the snow / and not soil its purity ... Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse / I've finally come to understand life / through staring blankly at my navel' 4st 7lb - a self-critical insight into anorexia and self-abuse.
12. 'I am an architect, they call me a butcher / I am a pioneer, they call me primitive / I am purity, they call me perverted' ... 'I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer / I spat out Plath and Pinter' ... 'The first time you see yourself naked you cry / soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken / he loves me truly this mute solitude I'm draining / I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing' ... 'If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down / I've been too honest with myself, I should have lied like everybody else' ... 'So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything' - Faster
13. 'Scratch my leg with a rusty nail, sadly it heals / colour my hair but the dye grows out / I can't seem to stay a fixed ideal / Childhood pictures redeem, clean and so serene / see myself without ruining lines / whole days throwing sticks into streams' - Die in the Summertime
14. 'Teacher starve your child, P.C. approved / as long as the right words are used / systemised atrocity ignored / as long as bi-lingual signs on view' ... 'P.C. she speaks impotent, sterile, naive, blind, atheist, sadist, stiff-upper lip, first principle of her silence' - PCP - a look at 'political correctness' and some of its sinister implications
I am so glad the Manics are still making music - but these lyrics and Richey's contributions will always be relevant and he will always be there as part of the band. I hope that his family and the band find peace and closure one day. He has left an extraordinary legacy and made a huge difference. Would love to hear some of your favourite lyrics and memories of Richey.
#manic street preachers#richey edwards#richey james#manics#lyrics#remembering richey#in memory#twenty years#anniversary#quotes
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'And I feel like you forget me and all the words that we said / remembering these memories weighs heavy on my chest / And I wanted to ask you /.../ Do you feel the same as yesterday' - Little Love, RIR
I guess those lyrics caught my attention because they're the kind of simple questions, which may seem irrational, which you want to ask in a relationship - the ever-present insecurities and vulnerability that you can't always control. I stumbled upon this band on BalconyTV today and really want to hear more - unfortunately I will have to wait as their debut album is still in the works and their EP isn't available in the UK. Revel In Romance play alternative rock with some folk and pop influences - they cite Beck, Matchbox Twenty, Avril Lavigne and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers as just a few of their influences.
Based in Georgia and busy gathering a following in America, it still shouldn't be too long before we start hearing them internationally. Saxony Raine has a great voice - heavily emotive and powerful, slipping naturally into a soaring higher register. The lyrics I've heard so far are really promising - have a listen to 'Things We Don't Forget' -one of the non-unplugged songs they have made available so far (http://www.revelinromance.com/hear-us/).
Facebook: www.facebook.com/revelinromance
Twitter: https://twitter.com/revelinromance
Website: http://www.revelinromance.com/
#2015#rock#alternative rock#revel in romance#folk#lyrics#new music#recommendation#female vocalist#RIR
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Although I've always been interested in the project, Angels & Airwaves have never quite drawn me in.
Until now.
This is one of the stand-out songs from their new album/multimedia project - The Dream Walker. A short film called Poet Andersen: The Dream Walker has been released alongside the album (there will also be a graphic novel). Poet Andersen journeys into a dream world created by humanity's shared unconscious thoughts. He is led through this world by a Dream Walker who helps him confront his demons and his truths (see the beautifully animated trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLgE6xNkTE).
The band have always aimed to create a project that explored a sense of the otherworldly and the alien, launching themselves into a dynamic and fantastical creative space. On this album they take with them a fair share of angst and human emotion - perfectly encapsulated in this song - 'Tunnels' - which was written after Tom's father passed away. Tom Delonge (Blink 182) doesn't always get it right but you've got to respect his ambition and imagination. He certainly has an interesting mind.
'Tunnels' is where the art project and emotional human experience really collide - and that is why it is successful. It feels like you are in car, zooming through a tunnel - on an infinite and unknown journey. It circles the experience of losing his father and wondering what happens after death - questioning whether there is a God ('I'd thank God, but then what is he for? / Cause I left a few white calls at his door')
In the context of Tom's own mind and journey, the lyrics are really affecting - there is a sense of feeling spiritually lost and being left alone in the universe ('I am still, without devotion / Cause we're all asleep at the wheel / Asleep and so surrounded by what we feel / a bad dream on a rope and pulled through an ocean / with my heart, I'm lost out at sea / and every kind of thought screams misery / so lonely'.)
The lyrics are definitely angst-ridden in parts but it's the measured delivery and restraint in the verse which adds to their resonance and stops them cloying. There's a simple, metallic/cutting tremolo guitar accompaniment and a steady drum beat to hold back the emotion until the following verses. Then there's a sonic explosion of romantic, aching rock melody and Tom's voice is raw with emotion.
Also wanted to mention the unusually short and sweet 'Anomaly' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEkjIEzyyYE). It's a nice change on the album and is just a lovely acoustic song. The lyrics are kind of rough but endearing - they're very earnest and direct, without the Blink 182 humour and cheekiness. You kind of fall for them as you go along - they're charming - even if Delonge writes that his lines are not 'Hemingway' and he thinks 'they don't have any value'. Jeez, what's happening to me? I never used to be a romantic. I apologise.
'I never wanted to live my life without you / I never wanted to coast, always wanted to be an anomaly'
And I particularly loved: 'I think I'm in love / it's the scariest place to be alive'.
I need to listen to the rest of the album properly but these are the ones that immediately caught my attention. So I recommend giving them a listen, even if you haven't particularly enjoyed Angels & Airwaves' work thus far. This is much more relatable, without losing its aspirational quality.
Get the album here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/the-dream-walker/id935905630
and follow the band at: @AVABandOfficial
#angels and airwaves#tom delonge#blink 182#dream walker#poet andersen#tunnels#anomaly#new music#recommendation#lyrics#ava
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