“Steady” is Sleepy Gonzales’ Melancholic and Witty Gloom Folk Song About Modern Malaise

SleepyGonzales2_lg — Sleepy Gonzales, photo courtesy the artists

Sleepy Gonzales uses a simple, melancholic piano melody, strings and intermittent sounds, like sound effects in a movie to set a sense of place, as the backdrop to “Steady,” a song seemingly about modern malaise. The song unfolds like a series seemingly mundane yet poetic and thoughtful diary entries rich in detail and an almost eerie catalog of one’s disassociation from one’s own life with the music reinforcing a sense of resignation to a lesser life. Is it supposed to be funny in a maudlin way? Certainly lines speaking of one being “serotonin in human form” and collecting all the money one bets against oneself, the barista knowing your name but spelling it wrong and a billion candles “one for every time you let me down” and how “disappointment comes as easily as another breath” are dramatic enough to seem absurd and thus humorous. But that humor also comes from a place of deep pain the kind that seems impossible to fully soothe except maybe through writing a song and laying those thoughts out before you like you might in a journal so that it’s not those thoughts that become the truth but, rather, a sketch of the patterns of your thinking so that you can wallow further or to at least know you’re not like that all the time. Both have their uses and this song vividly captures that time, however long it lasts, a night, a few years, long stretches of one’s lifetime, when your sadness seems like it will never end yet you somehow keep going because this mood isn’t so abrupt and disruptive to your life would be a reason to despair and you know you’ll survive it, SOMEHOW. Fans of Rilo Kiley and Jenny Lewis will appreciate the wit and dry humor that runs throughout the song. Listen to “Steady” on Spotify and follow the Vancouver, British Columbia-based band at the links below.