The Hottman Sisters Photo credit: Brian Hughes
“Never made it through the gate…”
Fear of the unknown, or perhaps the unknowable, has a strong lived tradition in songwriting, so much so that it can probably be said that trying to quell that fear through song is the height of a songwriter’s craft. Today The Hottman Sisters, Omaha-based Jessica, Heather & Tiffany, have released the burning with yearning new single “Afterlife Passerby” which continues on this tradition, but augmented with new age urgency and relevancy. They aim to answer the age-old question of how one wrestles with this fear of the unknown, but are doing so in a time when so much of the world feels so much less familiar to begin with.
Says Jessica Hottman,
“I wrote “Afterlife Passerby” about that small, yet viscous fear of missing out on a supposed peaceful afterlife. It’s a fear that has loomed over my head since I was a child, always haunting the bright peaks of life. But perhaps, even greater, is the fear of missing out on the point and purpose of my existence on this planet. Frittering time away with meaningless worries or pursuits. It’s all about recentering and saying, so what! Today is the day, is the day. It’s coexisting with future grief. Mourning it, laughing in its face, and dealing with it daily, while still retaining a glow. Offering up my art, however potentially wrong or regretful I may be in the end.”
Like a march into some place or time mysterious, the song’s steady groove plows the path clear to let the chorus sink in when these words arrive in revelatory fashion; “just a passerby of a simple afterlife”. The Sisters’ most immediate appeal, their vocal harmonies, bring to the fore the emotions of wrestling with things of the heart, things that are bigger than can be explained in a 4 minute pop song. Yet that feeling of hopeful uncertainty itself is essentially what the hook of “Afterlife Passerby” is. It’s a collection of moments and feelings collaged into a linear build, never quite resolving, never quite satiating, just passing by as one experiencing something greater than they can convey.
As the march of the drums finishes, as the song “arrives at the gates”, guitars like trumpets blare as the track fades and we’re left fulfilled, yet still wanting and wondering more. It’s a great single to showcase their upcoming EP Human Form, due out June 6th.
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