Seven years in the making, “Machine” by Delaware-based indie-folk artist Evan Fox was worth the wait. This track infuses Fox’s bedroom folk stylings with spacious indie-pop arrangements and an edge of lo-fi grit to create a beautiful, moving piece of music in the vein of Sun Kil Moon and Nick Drake. “Machine” is a song for afternoons spent haunting your own bedroom, worn down by shitty jobs, dim futures, and waning hopes. But beneath the melancholy, it’s also a song of redemption—a search for the threads of joy from your past that can bind you back together and pull you onward.
“Machine” arrives in two parts, like counterpoint vignettes from the same faded memory. The first half filters intricate acoustic arpeggiation through an antique microphone and tape saturation to conjure the warm fragility of a grainy home video. It captures a uniquely modern brand of nostalgia: one driven less by a longing for the past, and more by a flat disappointment in the present. The emo yearning in Fox’s voice finds a home in the lament for an adulthood whose cold reality falls far short of the dreams of childhood.
The architecture of the song mirrors Fox’s own life as it transformed between the creation of each part. The weight of those intervening years was enough to make him temporarily abandon music, but “Machine” doesn’t end in defeat. The phrase “If something gets you through it / You should do it, shouldn’t you?” plays like a thesis statement as it leads into the second half of the song: an anthemic slowcore jam powered by a sudden uplift from the rhythm section and a warbly, melodic duet of electric guitar. As the last notes fade, the parting impression of “Machine” is ultimately one of resiliency. On the eve of his debut full-length release, it’s a quality that has profoundly impacted Fox as an artist, for which eager fans will be eternally grateful.
Listen to “Machine” below, and keep an eye out for Evan Fox’s debut LP, where you’re living, dropping in June:
Written by John Bagatta
