It’s all very well writing songs about the horrors taking place in the Western world today: civil unrest, increasingly authoritarian leadership, extreme ideas becoming more mainstream, and the like, but those are merely the symptoms of a problem rather than the problem itself. That lays music deeper and is much more complex.
However, part of the problem surely lies in the influence of the internet, not least in its ability to spread falsehoods and dangerous ideas to an ever-growing number of people, but also what it replaces, – reading, travel, sociability, exploration of the real world for ourselves, all things that make us more broadminded and empathetic, knowledgable and more considered in our thoughts and deeds. And, even when those who seem forever plugged in are wallowing in safer waters, aren’t we just becoming a nation of anti-social screen junkies at the expense of getting out, meeting people, and enjoying the world.
That is what Oreaganomics is proposing in their latest single, “Wasting Summer Online.” And if songs with a socio-political message usually come wrapped around a forceful sonic delivery system, this comes from the opposite place.
Even before you contemplate the lyrics, the music itself, a dreamy haze of ambient grooves and lilting, lazy beats, soulful licks, and seductive sonic tricks, sells the idea that it is better to be out there in the sun, soaking up nature, making new friends, hanging out with old buddies, than locked into the mind-numbing pointlessness of anti-social media.
This is the sort of subversiveness we need: gentle, suggestive, seductive, subversion that merely gets you gently nodding along, both in agreement with its ideas and to its effortless groove.
The revolution might not be televised, but it might just be the best soundtrack to a summer barbeque that you have ever heard!
