Song Spotlight: "Collective Thoughts" by From Elsewhere

Emo and punk music have a tendency to thrash and to smash—not that there’s anything wrong there. Cut beat drums, searing power chords, and shouted vocals lead to the mosh pits we know and love. Yet they leave very little room for anything else. One weapon left almost untouched by such music is groove: dynamic shifts and attentive writing that add a fluidity to the music, an energy that moves the listener even as it moves the song. Groove gets largely ignored by emo and punk, but not with Indiana’s From Elsewhere, whose latest single “Collective Thoughts” functions on the very principal that punk can sway as hard as it can slam. 

“Collective Thoughts” is a swirl of interlocking guitar riffs and drum beats, every instrument seamlessly intertwined in an emotive dance. The bass treads playfully along its own melody as the band dips between dynamic breaks, the composition undulating like ocean waves. The band hangs back for the verses, letting the soft rasped vocals float at the surface until the explosive chorus crashes into existence. 

The chorus poses the question “Would you tell them all your secrets / when they don’t give a fuck about them?” almost like a challenge, kicking the chorus to life with profanity that invites the gritty chords and chugging rhythm section to carry the tune along. “Collective Thoughts” is a tune that evolves as it goes, the intelligent compositional choices creating momentum for a band locked into a powerful and particularly unique groove. 

The indie-punk riffs and casually emotional lyrics of “Collective Thoughts” coalesce into a tune that is too danceable for its own good, and yet as introspective as a dream journal. From Elsewhere approach their songs with an intensity that is both powerful and restrained; they crank the energy up slowly as they go, letting their drum fills and catchy rhythms sink their teeth in before dragging the listener down into the depths of the song. This is a band that understands the importance of thought in music, and how it relays feeling; so I wouldn’t be surprised to see From Elsewhere making big waves in the near future. 

You can find more info on From Elsewhere on their Facebook page. They just dropped their debut EP, Just Like the Sun, featuring “Collective Thoughts” on Spotify. You can also download the single from their Bandcamp page.

Will Grayson - Yet What Else After All

All art strives to bring its audience somewhere, to create an experience that is both novel and immersive. No small task for any medium. As a lover of music, I have no trouble letting a song or a record take me away, but it is rare that I am absorbed by the music, carried into a world that is both brand new and painfully familiar. And that is exactly what happens every time I start spinning the new full-length by Will Grayson, Yet What Else After All, an expansive journey through youth and memory.

Will Grayson is a solo musician who thinks like an orchestra, and the instrumentation on Yet What Else After All really has the feel of a symphony. The record is a splay of different dynamics and textures, placing grinding, near-dissonant rock anthems next to wounded acoustic ballads. Even the songs themselves feature dramatic, almost violent shifts: “Like a Death” is a panic attack juxtaposed with a daydream, while “Angels’ Wills and Diana’s Pills” jumps from jangly 4/4 indie-pop into a jolt of mathy and fuzzed-out rock.

In juxtaposition to this cacophony of sounds are the vocals on Yet What Else After All. The melodies are gentle, like the scrawl of a pencil as it writes, and that is just what his voice is doing. Will Grayson uses rapid-fire rhyme and multiple literary devices to brighten his language and delivery, all sung in a soulful croon. His lyrics are feathered strokes of the human experience, delving into the depths of relationships and the tangled messes that they can become.

Lines like “You know why / I’m callin’ tonight / because I can’t win that fight / if I have to face you” or “Your passive reaction / smacks of a pyrrhic attack” expertly capture the tiny intensities and anxieties that often manifest in relationships. Yet it’s not all misery; the lines “Last night I tried to tell you why / I became such an ambivalent guy / oh well, okay, alright” cheekily introduce the concept of ambivalence before immediately bringing it to life within the song.

Yet What Else After All plays like flipping the pages of a photo album. Each song captures an experience in sickly-sweet detail that pulls from the past those ghost notes of nostalgia. There are parts heavy and yet beautiful, moments of clarity next to fuzzy yet familiar feelings. Will Grayson has managed to press a dream to a record, and each listen has me dizzy like the moments just after waking up, trying to remember specifics but finding only deep emotions instead. It keeps sucking me back in, and I have no doubt it will do the same to you.

My Top Track: “Because He’s Hiding Something”

You can find more from Will Grayson via his Instagram page, @willgrayson. Then head to Spotify to stream Yet What Else After All, or hit his Bandcamp page to purchase your own copy.