Allow me to get this out of my system…Today is heaven as far as World Football is concerned and I couldn’t be more excited: England – Switzerland, Holland – Turkey, Colombia – Panama and Uruguay – Brasil. I’m almost salivating writing it. Colombia turns into a street festival when their football team plays. Not only that, my favourite Australian football team Richmond Tigers are set to play in 15 minutes time. Now onto to today’s featured track….
If I was currently in my teens or early twenties I’m almost certain I would be fully invested in the music by Alvvays. Perhaps even bought their albums and gone to see them in concert. This is the sixth appearance by them here and be assured it won’t be the last. Easy On Your Own? was the second song released from their latest record Blue Rev which has received widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 the album received an average score of 86.
Tim Sendra at Allmusic declared that, “the songs are memorable and fun, the performances are inspired, and the production is varied and always interesting,” and that “the result is a heavenly indie pop hit guaranteed to make their already besotted fans fall even more head over heels in love with the band.”
Wikipedia says Easy On Your Own? is a dream pop, indie rock and shoegaze song. The track uses audio feedback, distortion, and the glide guitar technique. Molly Rankin’s vocals are low in the mix compared to the instrumental.
Opinions differ about what the lyrics mean. According to Stereogum, the lyrics of Easy On Your Own? are about “feeling disaffected and worrying about the future“. It could also be read as a lament on being alone after a breakup like what Consequence said: ‘the lyrics are about “[working] through a breakup“. I like this one from Paste which fuses the two camps: “neatly blurs the lines between a floundering relationship and the drudgery of our current times“. I love the strong imagery in the line “crawling in monochromatic hallways“.
I consider Easy On Your Own? a great ‘zeitgeist‘ song for this current epoch. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading as always.
I dropped out
College education’s a dull knife
If you don’t believe in the lettered life
Then maybe this is our only try
And how I gauge
Whether this is stasis or change
Fill out the requirements on the page
And burn out before you can get paid
[Pre-Chorus]
‘Cause we’re always
Crawling in monochromatic hallways
Dream we pull a one-eighty some day
[Chorus]
If you don’t like it, well
Say it’s over, well
Weekends alone
[Verse 2]
Evеr lay back and watch the sunrise?
Ever hеar violins in your mind?
You know it’s only wind outside
[Pre-Chorus]
[Chorus]
If you don’t like it, well (You don’t like it)
Say it’s over, well (Say it’s over)
Weekends alone
Does it get easier on your own?
Does it get easier on your own?
[Bridge]
I waited so long for you
Wasted some of the best years of my life
And I wanted to see it through
This time
This time
[Chorus]
References:
1. Blue Rev – Wikipedia
2. Easy On Your Own? – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
I like this! Dream pop with an edge.
This song didn’t go over well with my group of followers. I’ll come straight out and say that Indie pop sung by females ie Alvvays, The Beths, boygenius, Courtney Barnett (and I’m forgetting others) get the least love in my blog and I have no idea why.
Yes, I also noticed that some of your (and my) most consistent followers skipped over this post. I’m guessing they have little interest in reading about or listening to pop, preferring rock, blues and edgier vocals.
I think you might have nailed which music my audience favours (on the whole), although newish artists like Argentine ‘Nathy Peluso’ (with slick new Salsa like ‘Pure Venom’) and Lana Del Rey, who is from your neck of the woods (with Arcadia) received some of the most ‘likes’ this year so far. Hence…sometimes its a lottery as to which songs muster more likes. Bizarrely, it’s often the songs I predict to get fewer ‘likes’ that receive comparatively more. is that your experience as well?
I’ve found there’s no rhyme nor reason as to how my posts will be received. I will say that, with the exception of my infrequent concert reviews (which get lots of views but not necessarily more likes), engagement with most of my posts has fallen off from previous years. I don’t know whether it’s due to the fact that there are simply too many music blogs out there, all competing for peoples’ ever-diminishing attention spans, or that fewer give a crap about my blog. I’ve also found that a lot of bloggers who followed me and read/liked my posts for a while eventually quit engaging with my blog altogether.
I couldn’t have written more accurately my experience with my blog than what you wrote here about your blog. Remarkable. If I did it for ‘likes’ I would have given up a long time ago. Haha.