Essencer – so long
There aren’t a lot of books that promise to teach you how to be a romantic. In fact, try to pitch those kinds of ideas to a typical publisher, and they’ll likely say that they could as well release books teaching people how to go mad.
And, indeed, for the majority of respectable citizens, madness is the closest thing that they can equate with romance. What’s it good for? How is it serving your goals, and why would strangers feel inclined to respect you for being this way?
The fact is that, for most people, the world offers just enough to keep them going and never enough to make their dreams come true. That’s awfully sad! But, it doesn’t mean that you have to surrender yourself to this kind of hopelessness, and the musicians who make up Essencer haven’t either.
There’s an old argument that great dream pop and shoegaze records don’t require lyrics in a language that you understand at all. And, Essencer’s “so long” lends credence to these rumours. The song is constructed to feel like the first realisation that you might be falling in love and that there’s nothing you can do about it.
Essencer’s greatest strength is the way that the band combines all of those melodic elements into something that instantly feels both beautiful and tremendously sad, a feeling that, like the music, you’ll want to sit in, soak up, and make part of your life.
Violet UltraRay – die 4 u
They say that if you don’t feel love, then it’s likely that you’re simply wasting your life. The people who don’t have any kind of passion that burns from the inside, we are often told, are just sleepwalking through their days.
That’s quite a warning! That’s enough to make you feel scared! And, surely, that’s one of the reasons that’ll power the global Valentine’s Day industry. Certainly, there are people who buy flowers for the right reasons, but most of them simply don’t want to miss out.
All of these promises about transcendental beauty are enough to drive some people mad. What if they never see it? What if they’re just not equipped to ever feel this way? It’s an idea that has been obsessing Violet UltraRay.
Ironically, Violet UltraRay’s “die 4 u” is a gorgeous love song that simply washes over the listener and, frankly, is an incredibly romantic-sounding piece of music. However, if anything, the song is as much about real love as about imagined, obsessive love. It’s a tune about falling in love as a way toward some sort of spiritual redemption. Ah, but just listen to the sound of that and tell me that it doesn’t make you want to believe in true love for a while?
