Single Review: Mercury and Me by Everything Everything

Very occasionally, a song will stop you in your tracks. Something about the lyrics and music will transport you somewhere else, to a special place that is both strange and familiar, in an otherworldly kind of way. It barely makes sense but my favourite release this week is such a song.

At the core of the lyrics is the notion of lying to oneself. This is a duplicatus operation. To lie to oneself, implies some level of concealment. It implies that we as humans have different layers. We are like Russian dolls, getting smaller after each layer is shed. Our consciousness of such shedding, gives us a glimpse of our immortal yearning for permanence but our conscious acknowledgement of how fleeting our thoughts and actions are. 

It is similar to the romantic relationship described in the song. There are sentiments of never letting go, along with the fear of never being a real person. The song and love is fleeting but at the same moment, seems like the self-sufficient reason for existing at all. 

I could listen to this song, over and over again, in the hope that the dawn never arrives.

By Glenn Robinson

Single Review: The Nearer The Fountain, More Pure The Stream Flows By Damon Albarn

This is an ambient number, there are nice sound details… electronic chirps  that are almost like birds singing, sounds which may actually be generated on a guitar. It is hard to tell. There is a gentle keyboard backdrop with a fading echo detail, that gives me the impression the music is struggling for breath. 

Musically, this single is a simple statement in a way. It is not a loud brash call for attention. It is content and self contained as a piece, not crying out for an audience. It is beautiful. 

Lyrically, the song is a work of mourning. 

To quote, “ I had have hoped you to see, you were the fairest and dearest. While many were fair, to my heart you were nearest. The year has it’s winter, as well as it’s May. The Sweetest leavers and the fairest decay.”

The song is in a sense a prayer, needing to be said but not expecting any reply.

By Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Slip! by Aziya

There is a real attitude in this song. It is in the vocal delivery, the way words are spat out. It is in the lyrics, how there is a forced necessity to take action. Musically, this attitude can be found in the lower end, with the drums kicking up a storm. 

The song describes a person finding it difficult to enforce boundaries: “You're forcing feelings on me / I perk my lips / I can't breathe.” The aggression of the song comes from a place of affirmation, the explanation sign in the title entirely appropriate.   

When this song was born, I imagine it came into the world screaming. Despite the terror of such emergence, this baby would have been loved straight away.

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Floating House by Michey Tree

Working a corporate job can feel suffocating. There are the unwritten rules of behaviour that many find restrictive, there is the unclarity of purpose and the subtle impact about how we think about ourselves and the world. 

Michey Tree explores such themes in her song Floating Tree. She sings, “Corrupt and corporate with suits and ties / Corrupt and corporate, they tell you lies.” 

Such haziness is conveyed musically. There is a chorus-echo effect on the guitar, the vocal delivery trails at the end of sentences. Emotionally, there is drunkenness in Floating House; as if someone is struggling to somehow rise above it all. 

This muted desperation really comes across performance wise. This is a beautiful track, despite or perhaps because of the darkness. There is a real human quality in this song, a proper truthfulness. 

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Forgive or Forget by Sarah Close

There is something beatlesque in this song. It is in the vocal melodies, I think. In some parts, the vocal variation occurs at the end of the third line, trailing off somewhere new, creating an emotional lift. The touch is light but the added sonic texture brings a human quirkiness and I am immediately disarmed. I want to listen. I am ready.    

The song is conversational in tone. It is a song about one lover on the cusp of a decision, who requires some form of disclosure from their partner. It is a song about a moment in time that could change the future of the relationship, where the call for truth becomes the highest value. 

It is a beautiful moment the song captures.

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Rare by Frances

Here you will find a careful and subtle articulation of an expressed love, rarified in a safe place where only two people exist. Listening to this song, reminds me of a distant chamber, far above the street noises below. The song is almost silent. Breathing in such a place can be difficult; the air thinner. There is comfort and understanding in this chamber. 

‘When somebody says you're different / When they open up a scar / When they stare until their heads remember / Who you are.’

There is an intimacy not only in the words but also how they are sung. Here you will find an imagined place that brings us closer to heaven. It is a place where the beloved is fully seen. It is a place where defences are not necessary.    

This sense of defencelessness is really what makes the song work. Defencelessness is so closely tied to intimacy, of being in a place of safety and vulnerability. 

This song reminds me of a rare form of desire, where the desire for comfort or not needing to be on one's guard, forges the way towards the road of acceptance.  

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: I Don’t Really Care About You by CMAT

There is much to like and admire here. There is a playfulness in the lyrical delivery, there are the beautiful melodies, the quirky keyboard fills, the uncrowded layering of instrumental elements. 

The song starts off in a straightforward way by employing a few drum beats, easily grabbing my attention. It is a new song but sounds like a classic. A song suited for the Sunday morning after the rough partying the night before; a song for reassessments and post mortems.

There is intertextuality too. The writer Marian Keyes is referenced, our protagonist comparing herself to a character being rewritten. This process of rewriting is a central theme. The song touches upon the distances between women who could/should be friends but somehow manage to settle for less. 

This song has many layers, both lyrical and musically. You could listen to this song twenty times back to back and find something new each time. After twenty times, I wager you still wouldn’t grow tired. 

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Virtual Reality by Renforshort

The musical textures on this track are remarkable. There is a wooden sound to the acoustic guitar, electronic hand claps, distorted singing as if a Zoom call is freezing.  

The lyrics are playful too; the opening lines are so simply condensed they operate like a Zip file: “18 plugged in and out of touch/ I think sometimes I think too much/ Self diagnosed with self sabotage.” One thought is falling on top of the other, meaning merges to create a sense of spacelessness. Everything is becoming 2D and so the yearning to return to childhood and wide open space becomes a new non-presence. 

This song is probably more relevant than it has ever been. While we have been staying at home due to government restrictions, our sense of reality is under severe pressure. The enormity of  what is happening in the outside world compounds the virtual reality of the internet like never before. 

There is no resolution yet. Just the interchange of images & feelings in an eternal loop. Only a desire for ‘something real’ opens up the possibility of change. 

Review by Glenn Robinson