First Rate People :: "Dark Age"

In their most ambitious and expansive single to date, First Rate People layer the synth-stabs in equal measure to elegy on "Dark Age". Full of killer lyrics about a receding youth like, "We were moody and hopeful and green" and "I'm digging the claws in the feeling", the band describes a sort of dissatisfied hyper-modernity, the song's title, this "Dark Age" described as a note on a phone, rhymed with "new keys for a new cage". It's a generational polemic in form and function, lines about the "folly of youth" backed by a relentless synthesizer progression, a modern-sounding song about an unfolding ribbon of semi-bad times. The outtro, the song's closing group harmony, a nearly two-and-a-half minute mediation on the lyric, "I thought you were showing me a home," implies that this descent into darkness that they call aging, has done little to foster a sense of belonging.The listener is left with a few voices, a plucked guitar and an evaporating synthesizer, aging seconds in silence.