The Singles Bar: Mt. Misery are tortured in ‘Lonely Pines’
Indie-rock band reflect on heartbreak with an enveloping and earthy new song.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
Heartache crumbles mountains, tears open the sea and generally disassembles the natural order of things. Tormented by sorrow and paired with a new, bizarrely enveloping new song, indie-rock band Mt. Misery witness ghosts of the past through the eery creek of tree limbs. The trickle of guitar and light percussion seems to comfort their bodies, which have been torn open and bled out in the dirt of the forest. “Lonely Pines,” as warm as it is to the touch, is a bruised reflection of pain, as they seemingly thrash around with lush breast strokes. “Hiding in the leaves and ivy / That hang above my door / And wishing you were here beside me / The way it was before,” sings frontman Andrew Smith, whose voice is illuminating and not as you’d expect after such a rash of bitterness.
“Wind blows through the lonely pines / But to me they look the same / I recognize the face but I forgot to take the name,” he observes, the woodlands ebbing and flowing around him in deep-chested sighs. He begins to lose himself in both the natural elements and the past’s tightening grasp around his throat. “Playing over every story / Repeating in my head / I watched it all unfold before me / In everything you said,” he sings. The encasement grows colder, and he falls beneath waves of regret. Even as wrinkles crease his forehead, he’s firmly planted in a distant era of his life. “Now I’m growing old but I feel like a child / Tried to move ahead but I’ve been stuck for a while / Would you help me to understand?”
He remains calm and collected through the torrential (and emotional) rainstorm. The past falls as droplets, sinking into his skin and causing such sensations to ripple throughout his bones. “Feeling bruised and broken hearted / To think of love that’s long departed / And I’m left wondering where to begin,” he concludes. He’s neither there nor here; he just is. He’s a victim of his own consciousness that’s been left for dead at the side of the road. But it’s a necessary, momentary transition until he musters up the will and the strength to move ahead into the sun.
Listen below:
