It’s April 5th, 2024, a rainy morning awaits outside my window. As I drag myself out of bed for the last day before the weekend, I must admit, I’m feeling sluggish. I’m practically sleepwalking through classes and meetings until I sit down to write. Why is there nothing in my brain? I pop in my AirPods, both of them even though the right one is useless, I do it mostly for the vibes or the hope I won’t be interrupted by people passing by my table. With one slight sound of a guitar, joy and a bit of sadness begin to paint my face as Lizzy McAlpine’s “To the Mountains” plays. This is what I will write about.
Today is no ordinary day for my sad boy music taste. It is the day that my favorite musician has released a brand new album, however I won’t listen to that for another few hours. I must wait for when I can go back to the solitude of my Lazy Boy chair and my Beats in the dark of my bedroom. For now I’ll settle with one of McAlpine's older tunes, a melancholy about finding solitude in what happens to be one of my favorite escapes, the mountains. It seems only right that this would be the tune for a rainy gloomy Friday. McAlpine’s music has almost always transported me as a listener to a whole new place while still making me feel every ounce of my actual life. In fact it was “To the Mountains” that introduced me to McAlpine in the first place.
McAlpine’s song is beautiful and perfectly uncomplex; in fact, despite the array of instruments like violins, guitars, and a piano it is McAlpine’s voice and lyrics that stand above the rest. In the early stages of the song it shows its cards, verse one and two will give away what the entire song is trying to say. In this section McAlpine depicts that she is going to the mountains and tells someone basically to not try to get a hold of her. The listener quickly learns it’s because she needs time away for herself. The rhythm of the song takes something of a melancholy voicemail and you feel both for the sender and receiver of this message.
As the song goes McAlpine crystallizes her feelings in the chorus which is the biggest departure from the typical beats of the song. In this she solidifies she needs to be alone. This pursuit of solitude is a result of who she is talking to, a person who has made her cry more times than she deserves, admittedly this is where we stop feeling so bad for whoever is the recipient of this message. She finishes the chorus with the line “I need to build myself a home.” Until this moment I wasn’t sure fully what this meant but I think she’s articulating the freedom that she needs, which may be represented by finding a new home away from the person who she once thought was her home. Perhaps it is the boldest step for anyone in life, to start anew.
In the outro however is where McAlpine truly thrives, reiterating her pursuit to the mountains. In this McAlpine finds herself almost building in confidence like this entire song has been an opportunity for her to work up the courage to speak her mind. In this case the singer's voice only grows in confidence through the outro with the last two lines cutting like a knife in the best possible way. There’s something of a peace to her voice, a calm confidence, and a finality in her decision to go and leave the toxic relationship or even world behind. It makes us kinda wish or reminisce we could or would have said that to someone, “I’m headed to the mountains, don’t wait up for me.”
Kaleb Unger
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