Easter Island :: "Independence"

Easter Island's latest release, "Independence," from their excellent debut LP Frightened, is a quiet one. The song roots in a distended acoustic guitar progression, later backed by piano but, thankfully, never the plodding mid-tempo kick-snare that ruins the second half of so many songs of this variety. "Independence" is one of those songs about leaving town and losing love, a pastoral take on places with "the best whiskey you can buy" rhyming easily with a line about the air being "warm and dry." But, all is not as it seems, and when the twist arrives, it kills. The protagonist has no future in these places that the band names as "peaceful" and "hellish" in the same breath. This perfection is a prison. The band waxes about "a perfect arrangement, you finally found it" before suggesting, "keep moving to stay alive, got to run away," a capitulation to the powers of escape. Possession is recast as fear, not freedom. The final lines, "you could have this for the rest of your life," finish the argument. The implication being, you can't and you won't. "Independence," the title, we presume, also cuts both ways.

Listen :: Easter Island - "Independence"

Easter Island :: "Frightened"

The opening line of Easter Island's reverb-heavy single, "Frightened" is an absolute killer: "Honestly, it's hand-in-hand with whiskey, finding rest inside a bed to sleep it off." The backdrop is a step-down chord progression that sounds like something you might use to teach guitar or piano, the rest sounding like a circa-2003 Death Cab song played at volume in a stairwell for its echos and crystalline elegiac qualities. It is as beautiful as it is precious, only a sparseness of language and lyrics allowing a bit of listener projection, what those first lines might really mean, a sort of universality that steers "Frightened" away from feeling adolescent or pedantic. Gibbard toed these boundaries well and Easter Island follows this tradition, an effort to prove the credibility of pretty things without ever being unpretty.

Listen :: Easter Island - "Frightened"
Listen :: Easter Island - "Hash"