Although the message here is contained in slow and serene sonics, heady blends of poised singer-songwriter seductions, echoes of Americana textures and mellifluous tones, and the ebbs and flows of string orchestration, it is as radical as any fist-in-the-air protest anthem. “Does Anybody Else” is as far removed from any radical anti-establishment rabble-rouser as you can get, but Steve Stinson comes to the same conclusion as many more militant manifestos.
He has had enough of the rat race, the nine-to-five, of breaking his back to make someone else rich; now everything he does will be for himself. “It ain’t a dream, if I wake up,” he says, time to stop sleeping and turn those dreams into his new reality.
Because the song is so understated, considered and calm, it feels more like a Buddhist tract than a call to arms, and indeed it is. He’s not advocating revolution, and if he is, it is only a personal one. And perhaps that is the answer after all… forget mass action, sticking it to the man, and overthrowing the system; all Stinson is saying is that we all need to walk away from the machine, find our own path, look to what makes us happy, and pursue it. After all, even on the worst days, you can still revel in your own sense of liberty, control, and ownership of your own destiny.
This isn’t a song of revolution; it is one of quiet evolution, and when has evolution never been the way forward?
