Listening to Endearments’ “Hazy Eyes” and watching its performance music video is reminiscent of going to see shows in warehouses and DIY spaces in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The music is well-crafted dream pop with gorgeously minimal synths, inviting rhythms and vocals with a soft but emotionally rich immediacy. The lyrics are an unconventional love song where there are words about how normally feeling so close with someone and welled up with excitement often involves the kinds of substances people take to feel open to others but with a certain someone special that feeling is persistent and requires no indulging anything but honest feelings. There could be a layer of irony in the song but it just has a refreshing earnestness that makes it immediately accessible and with a freshness of spirit that pulls you in. But those projections on the band in the video of colored patterns and early video art really taps into a specific resonance of nostalgia but without the baggage of being overly sentimental. There’s an unvarnished quality to it that gives it a home made feel that makes anyone remember what it was like to go to shows at unconventional venues where someone would do visuals for all the bands and make it special on a low budget and how there was more a feeling of togetherness and community to that that hasn’t happened as much in the past several years in many places. Endearments makes it feel like we can have that again somewhere, some time with people who want to experience that again and for the first time which plays into the spirit of the song. It’s a whole package. Watch the video for “Hazy Eyes’ on YouTube and follow Endearments at the links provided. The group’s new EP It Can Be Like This dropped on November 3, 2023.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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