The Singles Bar: Smashing Birds drift away just like elusive ‘Spirits’
The electronic group find meaning and light in death.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
“You live only as long as the last person who remembers you,” Zahn McClarnon’s Akecheta, a Ghost Nation elder, says in one of Westworld‘s most profound moments. It’s a chilling summation of the entirety of not only the hosts’ existence but of all mankind. If you dig a bit further, considering meanings of life and death in a social-driven world, there are even more layers. Alternative band Smashing Birds take death in their hands and offer a contrasting observation: that we don’t actually die. Lo-fi and immersive, “Spirits” ponders our role in the world and unpacks a heavy melancholy, even as synths seem to twinkle and dance in the night sky. A spooky glow traces around the outside, and you soon are lost in a magical touch. “You gave me your heart / Now worlds apart / We walk, no more forever,” the opening images tear at the heartstrings.
It’s a tattered and languid piece, and the band seeks to let the lonesome feelings scatter into the wind. It’s not about mourning but celebrating life as an experience we may never see again. “I won’t let you down / Fallen, breathless, and cold, I’m all alone / But I know, I know, I know / We were not just a phase / Every now and then, I pray / You’re still quite amazing / Everyone did sing your praise.” The rough edges cast a stunning crimson glow in the production, chips flaking and tumbling into their guttural fires, and the gentle crescendo punctuates the catharsis that comes from such musings. The line, of great yearning and heart, “say you will remember me” bounces into outer space.
“Spirits” kickstarts the band’s new EP, Dark Matter, a glitchy electronic record that is as grounded in the present as is elusive, darting across a cosmic backdrop. Songs like “Black Love” and “I Cry” demonstrate their depths as creators and storytellers, submerging the listener in a wholly static headspace.
Dark Matter is out everywhere now.
Listen below:
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