Elison delves into the darker side of nostalgia on “Fruit Flies.” It has a sound like an AM radio pop song appropriate to this self-aware consideration of how we can romanticize a time that wasn’t so good for or to us but the hindsight of adulthood brings some clarity to the those memories and how trying to live up to them can poison the present with habits of feeling. “Get drunk on the memories,” Marissa Kephart sings in the chorus as swirling glittery guitar tones sweep by, ending the line with “Spin out of control.” It’s a statement about how one can get stuck in the past while some people are able to say goodbye to another part of their life and the ways of being that no longer seem relevant but we’re all shaped by how we’ve been and it’s easy to engage in self-judgment and get stuck with those memories as a kind of personal, perpetual cudgel and re-litigate and repeat patterns to try to get things right to think doing so will give us an illusory sense of control. The exuberance of the melody and its lightness contrasts with lines like “I still haven’t taken out my trash” and “Body molding from the inside” as an impetus to clean one’s house for the New Year and a new you and this song sounds like the will to do so at last. Listen to “Fruit Flies” on Spotify and follow elison at the links provided.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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