Stick Season, released a year ago, has seen a revival of folk/country music. It’s gripping chorus the backtrack to many viral TikTok posts. But is this all we are listening for?
Noah Kahan September 2021
Stick Season 2022 Spotify Noah Kahan
Around this time of year we reflect, we revisit the walls that broke our hearts and the faces that tried to fix them. We flick through photos to recreate pleasant days and find lost memories. We dream the days away and find that we would rather rest our head in this other worldly plain. There will always be blurred faces in the backs of our mind, always be those nights when you catch those wandering eyes and you question what if it had been more than kiss? What could be worse than this? Falling in love just to feel like you’ve missed. Something you didn’t have, something you didn’t lose, you learn to live with the decisions you choose.
Stick Season 2022 Noah Kahan Youtube
Our family figurines, just people in positions, we have placed them in to protect us from reality. The lives we lost because of something we found out, everything you’re doing all for someone else. People change because they have to, changed minds and changed lives we can live in our memories but we will not survive. There are the miracles of life and the joys of Christmas and summer but there is also the ‘season of the sticks’ a miserable time of year where life drags out the dirt you have tried to bury.
Noah Kahan June 2023
This song is evocative of campfire nights, of some distant life I am yet to have experienced but I am only really inspired by it’s chorus. There is talent and there is poetry but it feels lost to the rushed tempo, a racing mind too scared to settle on the thoughts that make it run, so it is clever in that sense but it feels undone, taking away the motional impact that a broken heart has, there is no time to settle with the pain, there is just the feeling of running away.
However, I am impressed and amused by the rhyming of sticks with exist and the verse:
‘ So I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad No and I’m no longer funny but I miss the way you laugh’
Covered by Olivia Rodrigo on BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge this song has truly got people talking, crying into the cuffs of their sleeves, singing along on drives through the country back to see old friends and family. There is so much pain in poetry but it can be beautifully to listen to as it unites us, an audible force in the face of adversity.
Emotionally intricate but rushed through, maybe we need to be braver and spend a little more time in the ‘Season of the Sticks’ to truly appreciate the warmth of summer.
Mitski encapsulates the ethereal essence of the moon, her angelic voice offering solace to those in search of love’s eternal embrace.
Mitski – My Love Mine All Mine (Official Video) A.G. Rojas Production Company: Park Pictures 2023.
Beauty born from the mundane, this song came to light when Mitski, desperately trying to escape the physical burden of carrying her overflowing groceries started humming a passing melody we now all know as the captivating chorus.The very beginning of the song itself serving as a testament to the power of love, an ode to perseverance.
We are blessed with the understanding of our own mortality, a knowledge that can either plunge us into madness or inspire us to seize each day, fuelled by the love that resides in our hearts and minds. Love is the very essence of our existence, it is all we have to give.
Mitski
This song resonates like a heart brimming with hope, echoing the warmth of summer days and the delicate flutter of butterfly wings in fields full of flowers. Transported by the tune we are in a lover’s hands, caught in their gaze and in this moment we know that there is goodness again. Even when it fades away, love endures—through grief and anger, it remains.
With poetic prowess and captivating lyricism, Mitski holds our hearts up to the moon. An everlasting beacon in the darkness, a symbol of resilience, a smile shining down on us from the sky. Her lyrics an audible lighthouse remaining listeners there is always something to live for, there is always something more. Soft and peaceful, her power just like the moon, Mitski shares her heart with us in the hope we will learn to do the same for each other.
Mitski My Love Mine All Mine 2023
To love and be loved are not rare phenomena; broken hearts and lipstick-stained cheeks are not unique experiences. Yet, this is what makes it all the more special—it is a shared bond, a common thread that unites us all.Each and every one of us possesses an abundance of love to give, and if only we could put is somewhere when we go in order for it to go on. If someone offers you their love and continues to do so, surely that is more than enough?
We enter this world with nothing but love, and even though it may seem naïve to say, there should be love infused in every day. What can we expect from others when all we need is for them to give is their love? We realize that everything in life is transient, except for love—it conquers all.
“With a momentous magnitude and a siren sound it is no wonder The Last Dinner Party have reached such heights.”
The Last Dinner Party – Photo: Cal McIntyre
Feminine rage, feminine love, the mercy it means to be a woman. Chew on us and we will be thankful for the touch, passive to it’s pain. We are expected to endure, our lives an eternal endeavour. Constrained by societal expectations, we are bound to maintain a facade of indifference, as if ‘Nothing Matters’. Yet, deep within our souls, the anger simmers, the fire of resilience burns, combating the persisting notion the prehistoric. This palpable sensation resonates profoundly in the latest offering from the musical ensemble The Last Dinner Party, aptly titled song ‘ My Lady of Mercy’.
Like a composition from the renaissance, the music brims with grandiosity and intricacies. Each note dances and weaves together, painting an evocative portrait of the multifaceted feminine experience. In its graceful melodies and elegantly crafted lyrics, we find solace and validation for the emotions that stir within us. Indeed, the duality of feminine existence is a truth woven intricately into the fabric of this masterpiece. It encapsulates the essence of our longing, our battles, and ultimately, our triumphs amidst a world that often seeks to diminish our power.
The Last Dinner Party
Made up of Aurora Nishevci, Georgia Davies, Lizzie Mayland ,Emily Roberts, and Abigail Morris, the girls met during Freshers’ week at university and started to host gigs in South London. This lead to their discovery after a video of them performing was uploaded and a cascade of record artists got in touch asking to represent them.
Inspired by the saints and martyrs of yesteryear, the women in paint on golden plaques held high, Anne Boleyn, Mother Mary, the woman with a broken toe and a distant gaze on the bus, your best friends mother and your co-workers sister. We are surrounded by a mosaic of muses. This is an unconventional love song, unfettered from expectations here love flows freely, you love these women for who they are not how they make you feel, to love is to toe the line between being selfless and selfish and this song is is a testament to this.
The Last Dinner Party – My Lady of Mercy
We have unbridled passion for people we have a bustling sense of self and we should be merciful with who we are and how we want to be . Mercy does not always mean to be soft it means to be powerful in your approach and compassionate in your delivery. An orchestral Boudoir, The Last Dinner Party execute their songs in an ethereal way that exude gothic romanticism, leaving you entranced, euphoric but also melancholic – a sense of wanting to be a part of it, this choir of rebellion, rage and authenticity.
Despite is soft, soothing start with an enticing build up this song becomes quite a merciless sound it’s ruthless guitar and propulsive dream a tempest on the stage. My Lady Of Mercy is a piercing piece of poetry. The power, the prowess the poignancy of the premise, the alluring twang of the guitar in the penultimate verse, this song is succulent like a ripened peach plucked from a tree but beautifully bitter like a cranberry. It is ethereal and energetic ,sacred and profound, it is the sound of someone regaining control of their own narrative.
Nothing matters- The Last Dinner Party
With a momentous magnitude and a siren sound it is no wonder The Last Dinner Party have reached such heights. Despite only releasing their debut single, the hedonistic and harmonious “Nothing Matters” earlier this year in April the quintet have already had a major U.S Tour and with their debut studio album, a ‘Prelude to Ecstasy’ set to release January 2024, this storm is making the world their stage.
“‘My Lady of Mercy’ is about being a girl,” the band explained. “A girl looking up at a painting of Joan of Arc for the first time and thinking that she looks so brave and so beautiful that she wants to kiss her. And maybe she also wants to kiss the girl who stands next to her in the school choir.
For me, the song is about being brutal, showing the blood and the guts it takes to create a smiling face. It is a bit tears and laughter, choking on spit throwing fights just to get hit, its about feeling it all in order to feel alive. It is the rain and the thunder tearing your home asunder. It is about, getting hurt and hurting, healing and forgiving and doing it all wrong when you’re trying to do it right, Ultimately, it is a celebration of our shared humanity.
When I think of the Last Dinner party I think of Ophelia immortalised by John Stuart Mills, of Catherine The Great, Kristen Dunst as Marie Antoinette and the remarkable Mia goth in X. I imagine stories full of poisoned love letters, lipstick on tongues and smeared on fingertips, people wearing each others messes and mending them into masterpieces. Seeing the all female quintet live was like being invited to a party you never meet the host of, you leave fulfilled but later on discover a gaping ache burning in your insides, the longing to be a part of something as powerful as them, which is why we are all invited to their’ Last Dinner Party.
Tickets for their upcoming UK tour are available here.
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