Some people keep a record of their life through a journal, a place where they can write down their intimate thoughts and muse on the highs and lows of the day. Others do so with a blog, make videos, or post photographs. A more niche cross-section expresses their thoughts through art, and for some of those, that art takes the form of music. Carlos Grassot falls firmly into that latter category.
Having left his Spanish home at a young age, he has called London and now Liverpool home, using music to capture his travels and tribulations, worldview, and wonderings as he faces life head-on. Farewell The World is the second quartet of songs of a planned sixteen-track song cycle. If the previous EP, Farewell The Child, saw him tackling ideas of memory and the transformation into adulthood, here, as the name suggests, we find him cataloging the madness of the world that now surrounds him.
‘Wasting Songs’ is a brilliant take on that madness: if his songs are a reaction to what is going on in the world, then writing about such events is, perhaps, a waste of a song, especially when he could be writing about something brighter and more positive. This opener lays out his sonic stall perfectly: an almost dance-infused take on modern folk and acoustic pop.
By contrast, ‘We Won’t Be There For You’ is a spacious ballad with big choruses that feels, on the surface at least, like a love song. But as you delve into its lyrics, you realize that it is about corporate powers and how they only remain dominant due to people buying their product, and between the lines reminding us that the same capitalist principle that keeps them in place is the same one that can bring them down…money might talk, but what are they going to do when that money stops coming in?
Despite the name, ‘The Wild’ is calm and considered, running from acoustic delicacy to brooding crescendo, but evolving from one to the other in such a subtle and effortless way; it is only in hindsight that we, the listener, see how far the song has taken us. ‘Away On The Road’ is perhaps the most obviously autobiographical, a simple, harmonica-soaked folk song about the freedom of the road and the retreat into the simple pleasures of watching the beautiful vistas of the world go by.
Carlos Grassot makes simple music with deep themes, although, as they say, simple music is the hardest thing to get right. It is the epitome of modern singer-songwriting, weaving pop, folk, and acoustic traditions, rock anthemics, and indie cool together into music that is both timeless and, particularly lyrically, timely.
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