Mixtapemotions

  • “Worth It” by Kodaline, Thursday, July 28, 2022

    In 1946 George Orwell wrote in an essay titled “Politics and the English Language“: “In our age, there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.” In my lifetime, there seemed to be a time when we could be ambivalent toward the democratic process. We could sit in our homes on election day in good faith that the majority want the right thing or even stew in our own cynicism that the two candidates were different faces to the same policy. But look at how choice has been effaced. 

    A BEAUTIFUL WAITRESS WHO JUST COULDN’T MAKE IT. The third record by Irish pop-rock band Kodaline titled Politics of Living isn’t an overt political statement, but more of a casual jab at 2018 zeitgeist. Cynical reviewers panned the record as Kodaline’s attempt to enter the U.S. market. The album’s production and song structures do suffer a bit from the “Coldplay effect,” a term that has many definitions that ultimately mean a band imitating Coldplay to the point where their music is indistinguishable from other bands. However, Politics of Living is a bit of a move to the band redefining their sound as their sophomore record Coming Up For Air received the band’s worst reviews, holding a Metacritic rating of 3.9 out of 10. Although the band’s first record In a Perfect World also received mixed reviews, their sound was arguably less derivative. Rather than stepping back into comfortable territory, though, the band pushes forward with EDM and Gospel-inspired tracks. The result is better than the last time, but autotune seems to kill much of the personality in lead singer Steve Garrigan‘s voice.  

    I DON’T KNOW IF IT’S WORTH IT. The fourth promotional single from the record prior to Politics of Living‘s release in September of 2018, “Worth It” is also the fourth track on the record. The band tweeted about the song, how it was originally more of a rock song, and the band decided to pass on it. Producer Jonny Coffer, however, reworked the song, making it fit into the third album’s style. The song is partially inspired by a song by Kygo that featured Kodaline, “Raging.” The anthemic “Worth It,” is a musical contradiction in that most anthemic rock has a positive, definite message. Garrigan, though, brings the energy of an anthem and EDM drop leaving the listener with a question, “Is it worth it?” And Garrigan answers, “I don’t know.” Kodaline’s music is never bleak, but Garrigan also doesn’t shy away from addressing his struggles with mental health in the band’s music. Heck, Chris Martin spent a whole breakup album (Ghost Stories) making their listeners feel better. Listening to Coldplay, OneRepublic, or Imagine Dragons is uplifting. We don’t have to think; we just receive our encouragement like a feel good church service. Kodaline delivers the anthem, but leaves us with a question rather than an answer. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

     Official audio: 

    Acoustic live performance:

  • “We’re at the Top of the World” (To the Simple Two) by The Juliana Theory, Wednesday, July 27, 2022

    The Juliana Theory started as a pop-rock side project for Brett Detar, guitarist of the Christian metalcore band Zao. The band’s first record, Understand This Is a Dream, underperformed when it released in 1999 and throughout their career, The Juliana Theory suffered from marketing purgatory due to not wanting to be marketed to the Christian market but being on a predominately Christian label. On the band’s second record, Tooth & Nail‘s founder and CEO Brandon Ebel thought The Juliana Theory had a hit with “We’re at the Top the World,” a short, lyrically dearth song that was pure emotion on the ironically titled album Emotion Is Dead. 


    WE’VE GOT A LOT OF TIME. Twenty–two years have solidified Emotion Is Dead as a cult classic in the Tooth & Nail cannon. Like Understand This Is a Dream, Emotion Is Dead was recorded and co-produced with friend and Zao producer Barry Poynter. While Poynter was most known for heavy records, lead singer Brett Detar talked with Less Than Jake‘s Chris DeMakes about the recording process of the album and particularly today’s song “We’re at the Top of the World” on DeMakes’ podcast. Detar was able to experiment with sounds on the record, calling on a variety of musical influences from The Beach Boys to Journey. The sound of the album is as diverse as the band’s influences from sappy chorus to early a few well placed screams, though nothing sounding remotely like Zao. “We’re at the Top of the World” became The Juliana Theory’s biggest song in their career. The catchy song comes just before the cusp of when pop punk and emo went mainstream and became radio-friendly. And how did this song gain its popularity? It wasn’t radio or MTV. It was a Disney Channel original film called Motorcrossed. 

    WE’RE ON TOP OF THE WORLD. While marketing for the album never provided a music video for any of the songs on Emotion Is Dead, not even the band’s biggest hit “We’re at the Top of the World,” last year the band released A Dream Away, which contained reimagined versions of some of their biggest hits, including today’s song. Detar did film a video for the reimagined version (see below), and it is brilliant. In the video, Detar is dressed as a gothic rocker who just filmed a death metal video; however, when he finishes the video he puts on an uplifting song, “We’re at the Top of the World.” One of the reasons that Emo works is because it is rooted in heavy music. The sappiness contrasts with the heaviness and Emo fans understand that their favorite band has “cred.” Detar, in various interviews, has talked about his journey with the song that he claims took less than thirty minutes to write. Detar’s musical career spans from Metal to Country to film scores. He has influenced the next generation of alternative rockers like Anberlin, whose lead singer Stephen Christian claimed that Detar taught him a vocal technique that Christian uses the band’s concerts. Yet, this simple pop song with a name reminiscent of Carpenters‘ hit “Top of the World” remains The Juliana Theory’s claim to fame. 


    Audio:

    Reimagined Music Video:

    Memories of My Mistakes cover version:

  • "Fake Mona Lisa" by Carly Rae Jepsen, Tuesday, July 26, 2022

    In 2019, Carly Rae Jepsen released her fourth studio record, Dedicated. But the fifteen songs that made it onto the standard edition of the album were nowhere near the amount of songs the surprisingly prolific songwriter wrote for the album. Jepsen revealed that she wrote over 200 songs during the two album cycles of E-M0-TION and Dedicated. In an interview with Vox, Jepsen said that she turns to her friends and family with whom she has listening parties where she “feeds them and gives them copious amounts of wine so that they have opinions about the music.” While many of these songs will never be released, in the tradition Jepsen set with E-MO-TION, she released a B-sides record for Dedicated, titled Dedicated Side B. 

    HE WAS BORN IN VEGAS. Years ago, I was impressed when I heard that a band wrote 70, 100, 200, etc. songs for a record. Years later, through listening to more and more interviews, I found out that the myth was debunked. Several bands have said that they have written 50-200 parts of songs, whether a verse+chorus, a hook, a riff, a bridge, etc, but usually not complete songs. Today’s song “Fake Mona Lisa” feels a little incomplete with a short second verse and an absence of a bridge. I thought maybe the tales of Jepsen’s songwriting were also a myth, but then earlier this summer, I discovered in my YouTube feed a channel which featured tons of leaked complete unreleased CRJ songs. Many of the songs are just as good as the songs that made it to the studio and b-sides records, but they may have not met Jepsen’s standards for the theme of the records. Speaking of themes, Dedicated Side B seems to be more than just a B-sides project. Jepsen talks about in the Vox interview that she had a fake title for Dedicated: “Music to Clean Your House To.” Some of the songs on Dedicated Side B, though, are even more danceable. And while the songs on Dedicated are cute and almost adolescent, the songs on Side B, particularly “Fake Mona Lisa” are more adult, more sexual. 

    Mona Lisa by Leonardo da 
    Vinci. Source.

    EVERY NIGHT I’M WEARING BLACK IN CASE YOU’RE COMIN’ ‘ROUND. I always wondered why Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is often considered the best painting in the world. In a world of brilliant colors, why was this dull painting considered the best. Don’t get me wrong, da Vinci’s symmetry and ambiguity is interesting. I always thought the background was more interesting than the subject. But the most famous painting? Vox made a video explaining why Mona Lisa is so famous in their Almanac series (see below). Drunk History also tells the same story about the art theft that made the painting so popular (see below). When the painting was stolen, it was propelled to international fame due to its likeness being printed in newspapers around the world. The exposure to the painting, in a way, made the painting an international icon, sort of like a pop song about a boy who may or may not call the singer of that song, which spread around the world in 2012! 


    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Vox: “How the Mona Lisa Became So Overrated”:

    Drunk History “The Theft of Mona Lisa” see 12:54:

     

  • “Feel Good Inc.” by Filous ft. LissA (cover of Gorillaz), Monday, July 25, 2022 (partial repost)

    You might know Filous if you get the bonus tracks of pop singers. He’s an Austrian producer, musician, and remixer, and he’s remixed Selena Gomez, Troye Sivan, Kodaline, and others. For “Feel Good Inc.” Filous teams up with electro-pop singer-songwriter LissA to bring a new interpretation to Gorillaz’s 2005 hit, “Feel Good Inc.” The song has been covered by multiple artists, and while the original is the best, Filous’s cover highlights the melancholy of the song by stripping the song of its bass line and leaning into its minor chord melody. Filous’s “FGI” is laidback. It’s a perfect coffee shop cover of the track because coffee shop tracks often don’t have rapping or words like “ass crack.” While today’s song of the day is by Filous, it’s the artistry of the musicians behind Gorrilaz that makes this song interesting.


    DON’T STOP. GET IT, GET IT! In 2001 Blur frontman Damon Albarn and animator Jamie Hewlett released what would go into the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most successful virtual band,” meaning a band that existed in the studio rather than on the road. Blurring the lines between Rock, Hip-Hop, Electronic, and Pop, Gorillaz were a hit on multiple radio formats. In 2005 when the band released their follow up with the lead single “Feel Good Inc.,” it was a song that was played everywhere. But it was also a misunderstood song. The funky bass and hip-hop contrasting with the emo-style sung lyrics, made it seem like the perfect summer party anthem, similar to their 2001 summer hit “19-2000” (Soulchild Remix), but just as many artists got away with hiding sexual innuendo to their songs, Gorillaz hid an Orwellian dystopia below the bass-line making the minor key “Feel Good” track sound like the direct opposite of the song’s message. And like other tracks, the Gorillaz wrote both for their debut, fellow Demon Days tracks, and their albums thereafter, “Feel Good Inc.” touches social issues. The themes in “Feel Good Inc.” alone of corporate greed, consumerism, and sedating the masses aren’t typical themes in pop music.

    CITY’S BREAKING DOWN ON A CAMEL’S BACK. It was only in a college American History course that I learned about the 1868 novel by Horatio Alger titled Ragged Dick; or Street Life in New York with the Boot Blacks. The novel was a popular serialized coming-of-age novel that ultimately sold capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit as the American Dream. The story follows a young boy who has run away from a drunk father and starts to make a living as a shoe shiner, charging an exorbitant rate of 10 cents. Little by little, Dick can save up enough money, and by a heroic act of saving a drowning child, Dick is rewarded with a new suit and a job at the father of the drowning child’s mercantile. Horatio Alger’s novels have been credited for popularizing the idiom “rags to riches.” But for every one of Horatio Alger’s almost 130 novels, Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck’s novels are telling the plight of the everyday American who is the victim of big business. Alger’s novels tell us what we can do if we’re tenacious, and yes we have to be tenacious in a cutthroat capitalistic society. But it was Sinclair’s novel that moved people to elect politicians who would pressure the meat industry to improve sanitation and working conditions. Books that show the dark side of that entrepreneurial spirit and push us to elect those who will give us a safety net are probably better, though.


    Live Performance Track:

    Gorillaz: 



     

  • “Really, Really” by Winner, Sunday, July 24, 2022 (Trigger Warning: Suicide)

    Winner is a South Korean boy band signed to YG Entertainment. Debuting in 2014 as a five-piece group, they had several successful singles before group member Taehyun left the group in 2016, citing mental health and personal issues. The next year, in 2017, Winner released two single-records Fate Number For and Our Twenty For, with two new songs on each single record. Besides emphasizing that the band was now only four members, the records played with a spring/summer Tropical Dance vibe. Unlike many K-pop artists, Winner is largely self-produced, with the band members taking active roles in producing their songs, choreographing their dances, and marketing their music. 
    TRUST MY HEART. A lengthy K-pop hiatus over a year between the EP Exit: E and Fate Number For, the band emerged with singer Nam Taehyun. The year 2019 was a bad year for K-Pop. Former f(x) member Sulli committed suicide following only bullying. A few weeks later singer Goo Hara took her life as did former Surprise U singer Cha In-ha. In the wake of Sulli’s suicide, former Winner singer Nam Taehyun spoke out against the pressures put on to celebrities in Korea and the brutal effects that online bullying can have on stars. But these three suicides were in the shadow of another high profile K-pop star who took his life in December of 2017, SHINee‘s leader Jonghyun. At the time SHINee was one of the biggest boy bands in Korea behind EXO and BTS, but the pressures of the industry had precluded his taking care of his mental health. Jonghyun wrote in his suicide note: “I am broken from inside. The depression that gnawed on me slowly has finally engulfed me entirely.” Taehyun’s exit from Winner was truly a brave move. 

    IT TICKLES MY STOMACH JUST THINKING ABOUT IT. Winner’s music is always upbeat and positive. The group has an ear for a hook, and their 2017 releases are no exception. Today’s song “Really, Really” is a fun, tropical-sounding song. Although the song is contrasted by the black-and-white stylized artwork and music video, the band’s next single-album Our Twenty For brings to life the vivid colors reflect in the music by shooting the music videos for “Love Me, Love Me” and “Island” in Hawaii. Though shot in black and white, “Really, Really” shows brilliance early using light and wind. Time seems to pass over the course of the video as the sunlight shines less strong as the video progresses. The dancing in the video gives the song an extra layer of energy, but it’s not the group performing the dance that is most notable but the girls dancing in the video. The bouncing cars at the end of the video, though, seems to feel a little dated in a bad way. But overall, it’s a fun song for a sweaty beginning to a three-week summer vacation. Enjoy!

    Read the English translation on Genius.

    Read the lyrics on Genius (Korean).

    Music video:

    Lyric video:

  • "Escalates" by Falling Up, Saturday, July 23, 2022

    “Escalates” is the second single from Falling Up‘s debut record, Crashings. All three of the band’s singles from Crashings, “Broken Heart,” “Escalates,” “Bittersweet“
     topped Christian Rock Radio charts. Falling Up signed to BEC Recordings because of industry hype from the band Kutless, who came from the same suburb of Portland, Oregon as Falling Up. Working with the same producer, Aaron Sprinkle, Falling Up was set to be the next big Christian Rock band.

    I CAN’T FIND IT, BUT MAYBE I’LL COPE.  I’ve talked about the sonic production on Crashings and how I think that it is perhaps on of Aaron Sprinkle’s best feats of production despite the record never coming up in the podcast conversations I’ve heard with Sprinkle. I’ve speculated that there’s an interesting, perhaps an uncomfortable, story about Falling Up’s tenure in the Tooth & Nail universe. Sprinkle and the band maintain high-tempo sonic energy through most of the record, blending elements of styles of the day, whether nu-metal, pop, electronica, even hip-hop. The scream on “Escalates” muted under a symphonic-sounding synth pad and lead singer  Jessy Ribordy‘s vocalization is just one example of how rock influences pop and vice versa on this record. There is a kind of Northwest rainy forest tone that Sprinkle uses in several records, including the next year’s debut LP by Acceptance, Phantoms. The crystal-clear production on Crashings makes the record a classic–from the synth loops to the driving drumbeat forcing Ribordy to sing fast. 


    LIFE HAS BEEN A PLACE WHERE I’VE WANDERED. Years later, in an interview with the JesusFreaksHideout Podcast, Jessy Ribordy would claim that “Escalates” was written “phonetically” and that it has “a little bit of meaning spiritually, but it’s not what people think. They think it’s a very worshipful song, but it’s not.” Phonetic songwriting is a technique when a singer adds “dummy lyrics” to a melody, often in place of the finished product. Occasionally, phonetic songs make it to the record. Falling Up was called a modern worship band when they debuted, perhaps because of their association with Kutless or perhaps because they were one of the few bands that used “Jesus” and “God” in their lyrics on occasion. The band’s first to records also included a Bible verse to go with each song. “Escalates” has two verses: 1 Peter 2:11 and Philippians 1:21, both of which deal with “the war with the flesh.” The song talks about “finding something that’s missing” and trying to cope without it. In the video, Ribordy tries to enter a rundown Victorian house, but unable to enter finds a box in a crevice beneath the house. The box contains some memorabilia, but by the end of the video, he only takes a blue marble from the box. The Victorian house would be a symbol in the band’s second album Dawn Escapes and there’s probably a world of meaning to it, but to my knowledge Ribordy hasn’t shared its significance. To me, in my late teens and early 20s reminded me of searching through my childhood to find something I overlooked. It’s impossible to go back, but we can revisit parts of our past and take back lessons to help us with a current problem. 

  • “The Man” by The Killers, Friday, July 22, 2022

    In 2017, it had been five years since The Killers released new music, and even longer since they were a “household name.” Lead singer Brandon Flowers talks about starting with the song “Rut,” Wonderful, Wonderful’s third track, which defined the band’s new direction. While The Killers had been on hiatus had released his second solo record, The Desired Effect. Also before recording The Killers’ fifth record, Flowers moved out of his beloved hometown of “The Fabulous Las Vegas” which turned out to be a bad place to raise a family in the ‘10s. Still, digging out of the musical rut wasn’t easy. Flowers found on Wonderful, Wonderful it was ok to write about his family.

    DON’T NEED NO ADVICE, I GOT A PLAN. The first single from Wonderful, Wonderful, though, “The Man,” doesn’t fall into the typical storytelling songs we come to expect from The Killers, rather “The Man” is a bragging song. The song was featured in the Netflix original film The Perfect Date during a montage when Brooks, played by Noah Centineo, dresses up as “the perfect date” for girls who pay him, the song seems completely serious. The “manly brag” song leaves listeners polarized. For every manly man singing along, there’s a commensurate amount of males twiddling their thumbs, saying “Okay, we get it dude. You’re a man.” Some listeners have interpreted “The Man” as the Brandon Flowers of the past–a youthful arrogance and stubbornness prevalent in men in their late teenage to early 20s.  This “piss and vinegar” masculine tenacity can prove useful when starting a band, but what happens when you grow into Tim the Toolman Taylor? While the song is delivered as completely serious, the video shows cracks in the song’s philosophy.

    THEM OTHER BOYS, I DON’T GIVE A DAMN. I haven’t really talked about toxic masculinity in my blog. The issues surrounding gender identity are a very sensitive subject these days. Sexist opinions that “pink is for girls and blue is for boys” and that women belong in the kitchen and men belong in the boardroom are far more popular than they should be. Growing up in a strictly two-gendered Christian culture, masculinity, and femininity were modeled, and kids were expected to grow up to copy that model. Of course, there were always some exceptions, and not every man was super manly and not every woman super feminine, but there was an expectation of ideals. As I began exploring my sexuality, I also started to confront my presuppositions about gender. When we stop dividing the world into the masculine and the feminine, we can enjoy what we like and not have to worry about what other people think of us. Personally, I identify with a lot of masculine tendencies, but I will probably never be able to tell you how an engine works and I’d much rather go to the symphony than to a monster truck rally. My identity isn’t wrapped up in physical strength, but strength of character. But to Tim the Toolman Taylor, I’m a beta male. How do you respond to that? Whatever dude. I’m just gonna live my life. 

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

    Source:
     The Watch Podcast: talking to Brandon Flowers and Ronnie Vannucci in 2017

  • “Electric Feel” by MGMT, Thursday, July 21, 2022

    Technically speaking, The Great Gatsby is a satire of a wealthy society. But F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel is often enjoyed as a time capsule to the Jazz Age, and the parts that Fitzgerald criticizes are what the reads indulge in. But Fitzgerald certainly isn’t the only artist to have toed the line between criticism and indulgence. In 2002, two freshmen music majors, Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser, formed a band at Wesleyan University, this band would eventually be called The Management, and the band wrote several songs which they never took too seriously because they felt that their pop sound was secondary for their love of old psychedelic electronic music.

    THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD IS FOR. The Management’s hipster approach to pop made the group famous on campus, and despite never caring for pop music, the group’s most catchy songs eventually caught the ear of Columbia Records. The band prepared their debut record Oracular Spectacular and shortened their name to MGMT. The opening track “Time to Pretend” paints the duo as arrivistes, bent on living the rock ‘n’ roll life style. This single was the irony of the band–ultimately what got them signed as a gateway for them to make the rest of the record. “Time to Pretend” and the band’s follow up single, today’s song “Electric Feel,” and the band’s third single “Kids” were the band’s first pop songs and the only singles from the record. The rest of the record sounds much like b-sides and typical album tracks on a three-single record. It’s a fun record with several songs sticking out as other potential singles, most notably the eighth track “Of Moons, Birds & Monsters.” But instead of riding the wave to indie pop stardom, the band decided to embrace their indie roots and drop all pretensions by their sophomore record, Congratulations and with the band’s third self-titled release, the band receded into obscurity. But then came Little Dark Age. 

     I WAS STANDING THERE WITH NOTHING ON. “Electric Feel” is a song about sex, drugs, and electricity. It’s a fun club melody and the lyrics seem to be packed with symbolism. The song imagines being “taught how to swim” in the “Amazon” with the speaker and the woman at the “eastern shore” of the Amazon standing naked. Drugs, particularly Molly (MDMA), alter the narrator’s state, creating a new reality for the song. The video furthers the experience of the “Electric Feel,” showing the band looking like sexy rock stars dancing with barely-clad babes in a tropical setting. But the natural starts to blur as colors in the video heighten and animations appear. By the end of the video, the hallucinations seem to get less tasteful and more gratuitous, like early website animations. Overall, “Electric Feel” is a positive trip as is the entirety of the record. The band’s middle works, not so much, and Little Dark Age is a bit of a freak out if it were a trip, but that record’s somber title track is a reality check. Still, for a sweltering summer night, why not dip into the pool of “Electric Feel”? It’s a shocking “Oh-ah!”


    Music Video:
    Middle 8 Documentary:

    Read the lyrics on Genius.

  • "The Rescue" by Search the City, Wednesday, July 20, 2022

     

    If you play by the rules, you can win the game. At least that’s what kids are told when they’re growing up. But somewhere along the way, the tales of how it’s supposed to be don’t seem to match what’s actually happening. The prophets who have gone before you have foretold of a golden age when life was easy. Just follow the formula. Of course, there is no formula for being in a rock band, and success is never a guarantee. But in the mid-’00s it seemed that being signed to Tooth & Nail Records was a guarantee into both Christian and mainstream markets. Tooth & Nail was a sure-shot, until it wasn’t.

    WE’LL START A FIRE SO BIG THE HEAVENS CAN SEE IT. Search the City in 2004 formed when two Michigan high school friends decided to make a band. Guitarist Alex Sheldon and drummer Adam McMillion were eventually joined by singer Josh Frost, guitarist James Czech, and bassist Eli Clark. After recording the EP Ghosts in 2008, the band signed to Tooth & Nail Records. Two songs from Ghosts ended up on the band’s debut LP, A Fire So Big the Heavens Can See It, “Clocks and Timepieces” and “The Streetlight Diaries.” A Fire So Big was a more refined version of the band’s EP. Throughout the band’s career, they made sugary power-pop songs. Taking inspiration from the overly clever wordsmiths of the genre like Relient K and Blink-182, the lyrics on A Fire So Big tend to be on the cheesy side. As the Labeled Podcast has pointed out on multiple occasions, Tooth & Nail bands at that time, particularly of the non-screaming persuasion, pop-punk bands looked to Anberlin as a rubric for success in the music business, and this often caused bands like Search the City to sound like imitators of Anberlin, and sometimes the reviews from sites like Jesusfreakshideout.com and Alternative Press could be brutal on music at the time. But the songs on the album still make me happy, even though they don’t push musical boundaries.  

    THE REASON I’M HOLDING MY BREATH EVERY NIGHT. The formula used to be simple: sell CDs, get plays on the radio, and sell tickets and merchandise on tour. No Meta/ByteDance/Spotify streaming numbers counted, but MySpace did help get the word out about a band’s new album and tour dates. I saw Search the City at Cornerstone for Tooth & Nail Day, the day before the official festival began, in 2007 or 2008. It was an average show with the music not sounding in tune with Frost’s vocals. I’m sure that there’s a story to be told on Labeled, but there’s still quite a few gaps in the information I could find on the band. The band disappeared from Tooth & Nail’s roaster, but reemerged with a new lead singer, Travis Bobier, though that iteration of the band was also doomed (see yesterday’s post). Today’s song, “The Rescue” is the namesake of the band’s debut album. The speaker in the song seems be talking to a person who is a victim of their bad decisions, hence he is “praying for the mistakes [that person] made.” Somehow the singer is also in need of a rescue from something too, so he “hold[s his] breath every night.”  And it is with that hope that I leave you, a hope for rescue. Hopefully, we don’t have to build a fire so big the heavens can see it!

  • “Drifting” by Shapes & Colors, Tuesday, July 19, 2022

    The lead single and opening song from Shape & Color‘s sophomore EP, Love / Sex / War, “Drifting” sets the tone of the mid-teens power pop quintet. Fronted by the former lead sing of Search the City, Travis Bobier, the band shows their penchant for pop melodies in many of their songs, but “Drifting” is an excellent point of entry into the band’s short discography. Almost foregoing a chorus with a “millennial whoop” in its place for the first verse, the song serves as a kind of unguent for a dull or bad day, giving energy as it addresses the mid-twenties crisis the lyrics suggest. 

    WE’VE BEEN LIVING IN A TECHNICOLOR BLUR. The lyrics of “Drifting” talk about getting off course from where you thought your life was supposed to go. Singer Travis Bobier was about 24 when this song was released. At the age of 21, Bobier had been recruited to sing in the band Search the City after their original lead singer Josh Frost had left the group. Search the City was hoping to build on their success after leaving Tooth & Nail Records as a true Indie band, but several legal issues arose when the band’s manager claimed the rights to their sophomore record Flight. This lawsuit ultimately lead to the band’s break up. One of the offshoots of Search the City was Bobier’s new band, Shapes & Colors. The band started releasing singles in 2014, but by 2018, Shapes & Colors, too, called it quits. In 2020, Bobier’s new band CXMPASS released a single, yet they have yet to release a follow up. Back to 2016’s release of “Drifting.” In your mid-twenties, you start to realize that the dreams you had when you were a kid start to become less and less possible. It feels like we drift from our purpose.

    I’VE GOT TOO MUCH PRIDE TO SIT BACK AND WATCH IT ALL DIE. But this feeling isn’t exclusive to the mid-twenties. Sometimes the day-to-day monotony makes you question if you’re living up to your purpose. If you add layers of religious upbringing, being told that your sole purpose in live is to please God and if you ever start to question that purpose, you can also feel like you’re drifting. Then for the goalposts move thanks to economic crisis. The template we’ve been working for has changed. The American dream changed. Now we just have to survive. We’re pretty set on not taking care of our future, but then a song like “Drifting” reminds us of what we’re doing. We question how to get back on track. What are the steps we need to take “to get back to you”? Or do we just let tomorrow come, wake up, drink some coffee, and go back to work like it never happened?