Tag: Bathe Alone

Bathe Alone Reflects on the Enervating Effects of Living a Life Perpetually on and Often Over the Edge of Anxiety With “Champagne”

Bathe Alone, photo courtesy the artist

In Bathe Alone’s song “Champagne” the songwriter addresses the way anticipating the breakdowns in your mind can be an exhausting proposition that warps the way you live your life. You are always on edge about what might trigger a panic attack or a paroxysm of anxiety in general born of trauma. The title of the song apparently refers both to imagining what it would be like to trade places with someone you see randomly in the world and to the realization that even with your your own struggles that you have things about your life that are good and that part of mental health problems is feeding into them even if almost against your control, in particular by comparing your life to that of other people. But that insight does seem to take the edge off even if you’ve gone some way down the path of having having an episode as it suggests that you can often derail that procession to emotional disaster. And yet the song and its beautifully melodic dissolves and ethereal tones isn’t sitting in the moments of greatest stress, it seems to come from that time after the worst wave of it has passed and you are able to have some perspective on what it is that triggers you and amplifies the experience. What makes this thematic and musical contrast especially interesting is that though it’s essentially a blissed out, soulful synth pop song, at no time does Bathe Alone try to placate you by saying it’s all going to be okay or any of the other useless platitudes you often get from people who might have better mental health but no insights into how to make things better. Rather the song honors the experience while transforming that energy into something more introspective and reflective and thus more manageable. Listen to “Champagne” on Spotify and connect with Bathe Alone at the links provided.

www.bathealone.com
https://soundcloud.com/bathealone
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9hpjK2lI9E24Y40Dl6knfA
https://bathealone.bandcamp.com
https://twitter.com/bathemusic
https://www.facebook.com/bathealone
https://www.instagram.com/bathealone

Bathe Alone Crafts a Benevolent Mirror Image of the Cyclone of Anxiety That is a Panic Attack on “Calm Down”

BatheAlone_CalmDown1_sm
Bathe Alone, photo courtesy the artist

“Calm Down” is Bathe Alone’s concept song composed to be full of metaphors for panic attacks. The vocals are soothing like the part of your mind that goes on hold during a panic attack until it has subsided enough for you to gain some control over your nervous system and the way it escalates all the urgency in your psyche. The guitar has smaller builds and descending dynamics paralleled by the percussion and the relative intensity of the vocals. In moments the guitar arpeggios heat up and dissolve quickly. The guitar lead mid-song leaps up in fiery registers to give way to impressionistic, rhythmic notes. The song dynamics are vortices of emotional peaks and dramatic contrasts much like have a cluster of panic attacks and the overarching structure of the song has its own climax and peaceful denouement. But rather than the terror, the raging anxiety and the way your breathing seems out of your control, the song is comprised of gorgeous, transporting melodies that are an analog of a benevolent form of the experience by being a heady emotionally rich listen instead of the overwhelming sense that everything is over and you can’t escape or relief from the escalating and exploding tensions inside your own mind. By being keyed into the experience, though, Bathe Alone has given us a song that can speak to where your mind takes a wrong turn with some obvious understanding of the inner dialogue and the sensations that drive it, perhaps showing how you can get ahead of the worst of it and derail its full effect. Listen to “Calm Down” on Spotify, connect with Bathe Alone at the links provided and keep an eye out for the Last Looks LP due out summer 2020.

bathealone.com
soundcloud.com/bathealone
open.spotify.com/artist/384r9G0NILqkGrQL8IPMkC
youtube.com/channel/UC9hpjK2lI9E24Y40Dl6knfA
bathealone.bandcamp.com
twitter.com/bathemusic
facebook.com/bathealone
instagram.com/bathealone