Not that you can ever pin down The Scarlet Goodbye as they creatively careen and sonically skid all over the musical map, or at least the alt and indie parts of it, you know, the good bits, but the new single, ‘Losing (The Only Game in Town)’ seems to come from a more easily definable place.
You could never accuse Jeff Arundel and Dan Murphy of ever conforming to expectation or being generically partisan, but as the shuffling old-school cowboy-country-rock beats gallop, the fiddle swoons and soars, a two-step groove builds momentum, and chamber-pop sonics drift and drape and soften the song, we get the distinct impression that we are making a break for the border. And perhaps one not constrained by current chronologies.
And this time-traveling, nostalgia-evoking yet somehow musically pertinent sound is the perfect vehicle for wistful tales of past glories, of being upstaged by the new kids on the block, of being left behind and buffeted by the winds of change.
But such descriptions are not, for The Scarlet Goodbye, at least, declarations of surrender but reminders that nothing comes easy; they are not a funeral march but a call to arms. As young sonic bucks, you might have had the world at your feet, or at least your local scene putting you on a pedestal, but as time moves on, you have to work harder to keep up. But nothing worth having comes easy, and so the struggle to compete with the new fads and fashions, to embrace new adventures and small victories wherever they are found, is exactly what makes it all worthwhile.
Hey, if it came easy, we’d all be doing it. And it is fair to say that in their long and illustrious careers, Murphy and Arundel have seen bands come and and they have seen bands go, and here they both still are, making music… brilliant music.
Rock and roll might seem like a young person’s game, but it is those who stay in it for the long haul who are the only ones worth keeping tabs on.
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