Getting old is a much more hilarious thing than people are willing to acknowledge. By this, I don’t just mean what malfunctions as you get older, but also the trends that tend to come back in style under different names or approaches.
When you listen to “Lonesome”, multiple names may come up for different generations. For the old, Common Loon turned in a slightly airy slice of soft rock, the Richard Marx kind. For us, it is hypnogogic pop because it is a seemingly lo-fi version of a time we aren’t very familiar with. Either way, the time travel for times gone by gets more and more relatable, not just by sound, but by appliance, where back in the day, the soft vocals were to woo a woman that you have not held the hand of or that you are trying to convince not to leave.
For Common Loon, the airy synths and pulsating bass drums are a sound for a different kind of yearning: A yearning to belong, to just be in places where people are. “I may not be the life of the party”, he sings, “but I still want to go”. These are the lyrics of those who may not be the most extroverted balloon in the bunch, but realize that just being in pubic is leagues better than the hell that loneliness only ever provides.
What is worse is that he doesn’t only hear it within his own needs, but also the needs of others. “Nobody’s lonesome these days; just lonely.” “No romance in the solitude.” “Just tied up to the static in their little rooms.” Not quite sure whether this kind of isolation was covered back in the 80s in the same way, but I also imagine such curated isolation has never felt more so in the age where the internet still reigns king in connecting many people across the world today.
Discord is nice, but even the accidental bump in the hallways for a drink can turn the depressed sigh of a keyboard pad into a brief breath of sunshine. Who knows this better than people likely to lose their friends the quickest: The old?
Take a listen to “Lonesome” below:
Written by mynameisblueskye
