The Title Track to Sleepy Gonzalez’s Mercy Kill EP is Soulful Dream Pop Song About Letting Go

Sleepy Gonzalez, photo courtesy the artists

The title track to Sleepy Gonzalez’s Mercy Kill EP concludes that June 30, 2023 release on a note of closure. From the beginning of the song and its atmospheric, orchestral arrangements the male and female vocals in tandem seem to be bidding goodbye to a chapter in life, maybe a time of struggle that felt for a long time like something you had to do endure or get through to get where you thought you wanted to be. But when you get there it’s rarely what you’ve made it out to be in your head but at least it gave you a direction to go instead of being lost with nothing to strive toward. Whether that be a place in life, a point in one’s career or in one’s creative pursuits, a relationship or all of it and more. The whole EP has more than mere undercurrents of melancholic feeling but “Mercy Kill” itself seems to tie up the loose threads of one’s life in one particular passage of it in a way that makes it feel easy to let go of what no longer serves your life. Each song of the EP seems like an exploration of some facet of those themes but its outro song is like listening to the musical equivalent of watching the end credits of an existential indie film and Christian and Ally from the band have an emotive harmonization that is reminiscent in moments like what one hears between John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X, more readily apparent in earlier tracks of the EP, but here too when the shoegaze and dream pop instincts dissolve some and a touch of soulful jazz flavor sweeps through to give it an aspect of late not ponderings and because of that it hits a satisfying spot in the mind and of letting channels of anxiety and pain go in a way gentle and organic. Listen to “Mercy Kill” the song and the EP on Spotify and follow the Vancouver, British Columbia-based band at the links below.