“Songs In The Night” ReviewGrade: B+
An upcoming album might be able to test the theory that songs are in fact musical poetry. Independent labelist and vocalist Samantha Crain has brought her wilderness-inspired music to meet a recording studio complete with fellow Midnight Shivers band members.
“Rising Sun” is a soft little acoustic entry into the album, where their vocalist shows off her vibrato scale with the words, “Look into my eyes/come and see the rising sun about/it’s about the break”. It holds a gorgeous little message.
From acoustic listeners entire indie pop, “Songs In The Night” is comforting and bouncy, and hosts lyrics begging to be memorized and recited in the car. Hopeful lines include, “This here, this is the advent candle/a hope to stay and hold the weight, a peace to make.”
And for those days that life just flat out sucks, “Get The Fever Out” will be there to chant a single line five times: “Make the bed take the pay cut, think of the good you’re doing”. Just expel that illness and live without it in your life, it says.
Don’t think that everything is fun and bouncy; songs like the oddly titled “Bananafish Revolution” and ballad “Scissor Tales” demand a serious attitude in salute to lyric brutality. The former follows the format of angst teen spirit, while the latter tells the sad tale of a relationship breaking down; “You cried in the backseat/One tear came down your cheek/It landed on my bare arm/and rolled down in defeat.”
“This is where the lone people sit/left in the desert to cry/broken glass and railroad ties/my heart all full of sighs.”
Most of the tracks are standard guitar, bass, and drum music sets that allow the vocalist to reign supreme on the album; so when “Bullfight”, subtitled “Change Your Mind”, introduces the whistling choir it’s a little different. This song is the standard abstract track on the album.
There’s a high probability “Calm Down” snuck a string instrument into its midst; but that’s only fitting, because this sweet little number has some of the most poetic lines to be found on the album, including the stanza, “When the lantern dies, chase your shadow all the way north/Hold down your fort and breath/know your maker and tie up your death/Calm down, you’re not going down.”
And then from the calm listeners advance to a happier place with “You Never Know” and its images of enjoying freedom among the carnival and waves of “highs and lows”; as with all other songs, it retains that element of realism that makes the song poetry.
The album is overall, gorgeously genuine. Brutal, honest, and descriptive, it is all the things indie folk pop should be. It won’t end with a bang, so dancers: grab a partner and slow waltz to the end.
I love this album because of its grace and poetry. Nice review :)
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