Alicia Clara’s “Closing Time at the Gates” is a Dream Pop Song About Finding a Sense of Home Where You Are Rather Than Defined by Your Birthplace

AliciaClara_ClosingTimeAtTheGates1_crop — Alicia Clara, photo courtesy the artist

Alicia Clara’s debut single “Closing Time at the Gates” sounds like time spent in the soft lighting of a dream in which you find yourself in a familiar setting among strangers. Yet through the dream you glean insight about the reality of your waking life and thus a clarity that spawns a bittersweet, melancholic moods because you really are free in your heart from the rooting of the social context to which you were born. Most people in their lives don’t move too far for good from the place they were born and part of that comes from seeing the familiar as the comfortable rather than what suits who you are internally. This song, while soothing and lush in its composition, is about that discomfort yet acceptance of how you will never fully fit in with what you grew up to know. It’s about that mood that makes you wish you could fit in with that familiar context because it would give you the grounding in something to help define your life and where you have a place even if it limits your potential as a human. It is a song about self-liberation and learning to find your comfort in who you are and want to be rather than let yourself be warped and shaped completely by the expectations of your origins. Listen to “Closing Time at the Gates” on Spotify and follow Alicia Clara at the links provided.