Tom Barrett – Get By
Even the poets and prophets have been reduced to having to share their opinions on social media, or forced to make short-form videos designed to stun and impress. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but certainly nothing anyone can be proud of either.
But all the world’s online all the time anyway. That’s just how people communicate now, isn’t it? Well, one has to wonder if this is true, why so few real people get to find themselves online, manage to establish a connection, or share anything that’s meaningful.
It’s enough to make the poets and the prophets have to think hard about what they might be missing when they keep quiet and go about their dreaming. It’s enough to make Tom Barrett have to question the nature of this reality.
“Get By” is a simply gorgeous, modern pop-folk song complete with subtle instrumental touches, strong production and the kind of voice that could read fairy stories to angry Georgian wrestlers and pacify them. It’s also a song about how we make life a little harder for ourselves than we need to when we live our whole lives online.
Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast – What’s Going On?
There are no coincidences. How could there be? How would life be worth anything if things just happened for no reason at all, if stuff just blended together simply because things fall on top of each other and can’t easily get unstuck?
Maybe that’s the reason why modern pop music fails to move people in the way that it used to years ago. Where’s our mystery over who killed Paul? Did Dylan really fake his bike accident and is Elvis still living it out in Cuba?
But rest assured, we’re moving back to that kind of thinking. We’ll have to do it in order to maintain our sanity. Matthew Squires & Sunk Coast absorb all of the bizarre coincidences for one song meant to soundtrack a modern sickness.
“What’s Going On?” is a folk song for those threatened by psychosis and paralysed by what they hear on the news. The lyrics are great, but that’s especially because they’re not forced to make sense; they’re just stuck together until things stop making sense. Matthew Squires has found an answer, but it might just be a coincidence.
