Welcome to Pass the Aux, where KQED Arts & Culture gives you our new tracks by Bay Area artists. Check out past entries and submit a song for future coverage here.
Iâm a sucker for a nostalgic sound. And Heavenâs Club (multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Shiv Mehra and co-songwriter Chris Natividad) know exactly what theyâre conjuring on âToday,â a dreamy, trippy, ambient pop song that teleported my brain straight back into the early naughts, when I listened earnestly and very emotionally to songs like Airâs âPlayground Love.â
âTodayâ is the second track off the duoâs EP All That Was, which travels in just four songs from a strummed guitar and sweet, if nihilistic vocals (âall of itâs going to come to an endâ) on âPull Me Awayâ to the spare piano and glitchy drones of âThis Place is Dead.â
According to Mehra, the album addresses the âdejection of the present.â And while such a guiding principle may not sound like lighthearted listening, transcendent moments in each song make them far more than elegies to the human and natural worlds.
âToday,â especially, combined with its Lisa Frank-on-acid animated music video by Tammy Nguyen, takes the listener on a wild, cosmic ride that either snidely gives us permission to ignore the worldâs pressing woes, or offers some form of rallying cry: âToday, we wonât be afraid anymore.â
Regardless, the song is just as transportive to me now as âPlayground Loveâ once was to my teenage self, creating a floating sense of freedom tinged with the utter darkness of reality.
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