“Missing Forever” is a song in which Rare Monk utilizes the language of distorted and hazy, psychedelic folk pop, an ideal format really, to articulate a feeling most everyone living under late capitalism has experienced deeply at some point. In the music video we see what looks like Super 8 footage of a trip to a more or less endless expanse of nature in the wooded mountains with two humans and their dog, camping equipment ready for more than a mere vacation. Playing cards, clear waters, sun dappled skies. Great soaring melodies, ebullient and roaring song dynamics and propulsive, expressive rhythms that stretches the song beyond any specific subgenre and into pure mood, one of joyful liberation. The lyrics are a playful, day dream that evolves into a plan of escape sort of thing about needing some peace, needing a holiday, unlimited time and yes quitting one’s job and “go missing forever.” Even if that’s not ultimately realistic or viable for most of us and certainly not long term you can’t help but entertain such ideas because they are outside the thinking of a culture that insists you work yourself to death to be a “real” person and crave being “productive” all the time and for what? To not be able to afford housing, to pay too much for food and transportation and to have to have a subscription to everything, the complete erosion of public spaces and the encroachment upon the public sphere by oligarch bootlickers? That’s no kind of life. Forget quiet quitting, even a day or a week of a general strike would derail the system that keeps us down but until some kind of revolution seems possible there’s no harm in dreaming about turning off, tuning out and dropping out to “go missing forever.” Watch the video for “Missing Forever” on YouTube and follow Portland, Oregon’s Rare Monk at the links below. The song is from the forthcoming Coronation EP due out later in 2023.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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