The Singles Bar: Just Like Honey travel to where the ‘Wild Things’ are
Indie-rock band try to wrangle their emotions with a song from their latest record.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
Maurice Sendak’s 1963 children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, remains a magnificent reminder of the power of imagination and heavenly wonder. In under 400 words, Sendak paints an alluring story of a young boy’s journey to an island whose sole inhabitants are malevolent creatures simply knowns as the Wild Things, magical manifestations of his real-life anger. Ultimately, he learns to wrangle his emotions and is crowned King of all the land. Taking a fantastical, glitter-dusted page from such an outlandish story, New York City’s indie-rock band Just Like Honey alight on their own emotionally-wrought sojourn. “I need to let things go / But I still hold on,” lead singer Darlene Jonasson deftly sculpts plainspokenness around glistening arena-sized guitars.
She bends her throbbing, sinewy heart until it tears her in hands. “Take me away / Lead me astray to where the wild things are,” she weeps, tears bouncing off the drum kit and into the earth. Her pain scorches the crust beneath her feet, and in such ruin, smoke rising in lush curves, she discovers that something real for which she’s been starving longer than expected. “I’m waiting for the one who loves me just the same,” she confesses. Electric guitars howl in unison before they part as the Red Sea and then rumble inward again to crash as foam-laced waves against rock. Alongside fellow singer Bianca Yang (whose voice flutters in sweeping dove-like motions in the background) and band mates Patrick and Steve Le Mar, both on percussion and rhythm, the four-piece summon a spellbinding narrative.
“Wishing I could go back to the point that I’ve lost / I’ve lost the track,” Jonasson wanders softly through the empty halls of the past. Each room is stark and glaringly devoid of honest, tangible truth. And so, she eventually opens the front door, allowing the sadness to bleed right out into the street (and setting her free in the process), and while it might take even more time to rediscover and collect herself, she’s all the better for the journey.
“Wild Things” is lifted from the band’s 2018 studio record, The Weight of the Stars.
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