Premiere: Pozzi decries mindless political leadership with new song, ‘From the Ashes’

The well of frustration, anger, and exhaustion over the current presidential administration will never run dry. It’s like we’re all trapped in that gonzo Black Mirror episode, “The Waldo Moment,” except the vulgar cartoon bear did win the election, and the world literally imploded. Every morning, hopping online, it’s bracing for the next batch of lunatic decisions from the top down or another senseless murder of a Black person. It never ends.

A song like Pozzi’s “From the Ashes,” premiering today, bottles up all those emotions and sends them hurtling into space in a rocket. “Here we go / Another year, another gone / Another restless night to call our own,” the Boston-born songwriter sighs. And it’s the kind of sigh you can feel all the way down to your toes. It’s that kind of sigh.

“We’ve been pining for the moon, so long / We never stopped to see the road we’re on,” he continues peeling back layers of his heart. The road we now soldier is a vile one, jagged hate-mongering puncturing holes in the soles of our feet and its endlessness feeling like boulders strapped to our backs.

Pozzi initially wrote “From the Ashes” five years ago around the time Trump announced his plans to run. “I tried to get it to work with the band I was in at the time, but the other guys just weren’t into it. So I shelved it,” he tells B-Sides & Badlands over email.

As he put in finishing touches to his forthcoming debut LP, Tyrant, out this August, he returned to the song’s demo. “The lyrics just seemed to ring true now more than ever. A collective restlessness, cities left to rot, a mindless politician on the run, an interplanetary quest despite crippling the very one we inhabit,” he says. “The chorus line of ‘Everything changes and nothing changes after all’ seems to scream of the current situation. It’s déjá vu. Are we really about to elect another bigot, who denies climate change, to the highest position of power in the country? I hope not.”

Yet the song offers up a glimmer of hope. The production ebbs and flows around his words. He drains out his emotions so he can refill with the strength, hope, and urgency we need now more than ever. “From the ashes, we rise and we fall, after all,” he crows, extending his wings and hitting the skies like a phoenix.

“Besides my critique of current affairs, I think it’s important to find the hopeful message in this song. Because I am hopeful, and part of the reason I chose to properly record and release this song now is to inspire that hope,” he remarks. “That even though we fall, and even though history seems to repeat itself, we always find a way to rise up in the face of that. I feel we are more powerful and connected now than ever. And despite everything being fucked, and knowing it will be fucked again, we will make it through, stronger than before.”

Pre-save “From the Ashes” ahead of its Friday (July 24) street date.

Listen below:

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