As hinted at by the artwork of Lonely Wanderer, the album that this song calls home, there is something not quite of this world that runs through the heart of the music that Grand Nathaniel makes. It is undoubtedly found in the lyrics, which hint at escapism and adventure, perhaps through realms or dreamstates that are, again, not quite based in reality, rather running parallel to your own experience. As this single proves, there the promise of something more akin to a sonic storybook than a straight forward slice of pop.
But musically, too, there is something nostalgic found here. Not only do the tools of his sonic trade—drum machines and sumptuous synth sounds, welcoming if whispered vocals, and dreamlike soundscapes—remind us of the pop end of the post-punk boom, but they also feel like a portal to a more fey and fantastic sonic realm.
And all this comes together perfectly in the video that accompanies the song. We follow Grand Nathaniel through landscapes every bit as beguiling and beautiful as the music that hangs in the air around him.
It’s a great blend of the real and the imagined, the sound of early synth pioneers and the most forward-thinking pop, of the lush and the accessible, the gentle and the rejuvenating, a line drawn between ancient mythology and Lewis Carroll’s fantastical realms, between 80’s synth adventure and blissed out modern pop. It’s music that feels like a tonic for today’s harsh times and given that it makes a forceful argument for picking up the whole album when it drops in a few weeks, a single that has done its job perfectly.
