Simitree – Under Used
Maybe it’s completely true that, first, all you need to be convinced that you need to make a change is too much of something. Perhaps all that was ever really needed was the incentive to want to desperately yell out: “Stop!”
Before that, everything was simply a hunch, wasn’t it? You’d used to sit in the middle of a very crowded street in a very busy city and just get the vague idea that this wasn’t how it was supposed to have worked out at all. But you’d probably feel silly saying anything about it.
Nowadays, people dream of somehow being dropped inside a thick wood on top of a mountain somewhere and forced to live out in the elements. It’d all, maybe, make more sense. The hippies will be back any moment now, but before they do, we have that strange feeling that nothing much makes sense that Simitree has written an anthem for.
“Under Used” is a song about missing out while being given everything. It’s a country-inspired number about wanting a little less in order to be happier. It’s a gentle rebel’s song about the fact that most of our common goals are a bit, you know… meaningless in the grand scheme of things. What’s left? For Simitree, a tuned guitar and a campfire might just be enough.
Devlin And The Harm – No Havana
There’s a reason why reading all those history books feels less like a chore than all of the other homework that you’re made to do in school. And, it’s very easy to understand why people go in droves to watch historic epics on the big screen.
It’s fun to read about heroes storming the castle, planting the flag, and chanting a battle just as they are cut down in their prime. It’s nice to imagine that it’s you who is the hero of some film where the hero is a noble knight.
It’s fun because it doesn’t actually happen to you. History is a fascinating thing as long as it doesn’t affect you and your life. But that’s a luxury that most people throughout our existence on this planet have not been able to experience. Devlin And The Harm faces up to history and all it’s nasty tricks.
That’s the reason, perhaps, why “No Havana” is such a beautifully bittersweet song. It’s a tune about changing tides, about picking the right side through terrible conflicts and, sadly, about how so very little of what actually happens in the world can be affected by our behaviour. Devlin And The Harm has written an anthem. We’re watching history right now. Most of us are on the sidelines. And, none of us knows a damn thing that we can do about it.
