The struggle everyone faces, as Lightburn so pointedly states, is deciding what’s a better return on our investment: giving time to the extraneous “poltroons” we surround ourselves with, or circling the wagons and focusing on the relationships that matter. Masking the sentiment as fiction doesn’t diminish the song’s core tenet: no matter your public profession - be it songwriter, bricklayer, or earwax candle maker - we each have a finite amount of time, attention, and energy to devote to relationships. It opens with the cheeky line “Once I was a genius / and documented as such,” before closing with the sobering realization that “Everyone simply wants something / It’s probably why I’ve got no friends / Cos if I give in to them that will surely keep them coming / Til they’ve had enough”. Lightburn’s trademark dry, self-deprecating wit, so prominent on the best Dears music, pops up on “Fan Fiction (Ballad of a Genius”). “Centre of My Universe” follows a similar musical and lyrical trajectory the loungey vibes of “Changed My Ways” finds Lightburn sounding comfortable and (dare I say) content as both artist and family man. Regardless of the song’s autobiographical nature, Lightburn’s delivery, a mix of 50s pop cool and indie rock vulnerability, makes “I Give Up” a universal anthem that will resonate with anyone who has concurrently known the fear and joy of falling hopelessly in love. He doesn’t have to name his musical and life partner Natalia Yanchak in the song for us to understand that it’s inspired by their relationship.
“I Give Up” is a sumptuous old-school crooner about “ surrendering completely to a relationship” and tumbling head-first into love.
The first, 2013’s Mass:Light, a synth-based cinematic concept that allowed Lightburn to explore musical ideas outside of the indie rock universe in which the Dears orbit. Hear Me Out is only the second time in the Dears’ twenty-five year musical career that Lightburn has stepped out from behind the band moniker to make music under his own name. Most vitally, though, both men are openly vulnerable artists unafraid to explore what it means to simultaneously be an artist, a parent, a partner, and a functioning member of society. Both Tweedy and Lightburn are rock dads whose music is anything but dad-rock. In the privacy of their personal life, each share parenting responsibilities for two children with their life partners. Both men serve as visionary leads in their respective bands: chief songwriters, principal vocalists, and public spokesperson. Lightburn, I couldn’t help but be struck by the parallels. As I sat down to read the final chapters of Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), the autobiography from Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, while simultaneously giving a first listen to Hear Me Out, the latest solo album from the Dears’ Murray A.
0 kommentar(er)
