Self-Awareness And A Somewhat Celebration With RAT!hammock
Hitting your mid-twenties is like hearing yourself for the first time on a recording. That is your voice, but does it really sound like that? This is your life, but is it really turning out like this? Even though you’ve been living your life in a conscious way for a while now, going through the motions of self-improvement and career advancement, there’s nothing like a quarter life crunch to make you realise you are you and all this shit is real.
You find yourself suddenly a part of your life and conscious of what is happening around you like never before, as the next obvious step isn’t as obvious as all the steps that came before it. You know you’re not alone in the figuring out of things, but you feel the collective flail like never before.
It’s a weird self-aware period of your life that falls awkwardly between a party and a never-ending feeling of fatigue. A moment captured perfectly and with a genuine touch of genius on RAT!hammock’s latest single Word of the Day.
Coming in at just over 3 minutes, the track is a raucous jaunt that frolics into your life with such a joyous explosion that it’s almost enough to brush over the existential dread. Flush with trumpets, a Tamara & the Dreams feature and an endlessly upbeat salvo of drums, guitar licks and lyrics. Word of the Day is a feat of songwriting and production that feels likely to stay stuck in your head for the rest of the year. As with all of RAT!hammock’s releases it is remarkably intelligent rock n roll that flirts with elements of lofi and pop music in such a way that it is hard to place and ultimately beautifully unique.
Word of the Day races from start to finish as it musically holds a mirror up to its own themes. When front man Jackson Phelan explodes into the chorus:
Lately it seems, everyone’s dreams are in halftime
Bluest of blue, when I see our youth and its halftime
But I want to feel, something that’s real but there’s no time
There’s no time, it’s a short life, there’s no time.
You feel the that perfect mixture of franticness and energy that encompasses everything about being in the thick of figuring out your life. It is a phenomenal exercise in self-awareness, song writing and celebrating something truly unifyingly human. It is a phenomenal song.
