After releasing “Can I Leave Me Too?” the Kansas City-based alt-rock band The Greeting Committee has now followed it up with new single “Float Away.” While both songs discuss heavy topics, frontwoman Addie Sartino manages the perfect balance between airy vocals and candid confessions.
For whoever has gone through depression or is currently dealing with depression, the song will certainly strike familiar in its message. Unguarded and refreshingly — at times uncomfortably — honest, the track describes how depression can warp reality. There is, for example, the bold opening lyric, “Glad it’s raining so I don’t have to go outside and pretend I’m happy just to be alive.”
While The Greeting Committee do not hail from the UK, their sound would not be out of place amongst the revived Britpop landscape. While their older material definitely holds some similarities in tone to that of The 1975, “Float Away” actually makes mention of the band in their lyrics: “Haven’t felt this since listening to the 1975 / While getting high in somebody’s basement party.” There’s just something about the energy and urgency in their latest track, particularly in the drums. Perhaps it comes with the gritty nature of the band’s preferred rhythms and textures, evident in the production choices overall. As a result, the song perfectly captures that sense of turmoil Sartino was trying to convey in the lyrics.
For example, she shares in a press release that the line “Stale rye, once an apple’s eye” is meant to portray the notion of having had so much potential, and yet in this moment you’re frozen not knowing what to do with yourself. It’s a state of mind that many people will be able to relate to: isolation, disconnection, confusion, and uncertainty. The subtle distortion in the bass synth, guitar, and vocals only add to the delivery of those emotions. Aided by pros Jennifer Decilveo (FLETCHER, MARINA) and Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips), the production and mixing on “Float Away” certainly bodes well for their new album Dandelion, out in September.
And as melancholic as the track is, it does not at all feel like a martyr’s song. Rather, it’s one that describes a process of trying to find hope. This is also reflected in the video that was created by illustrator Kezia Gabriella. The colorful visual shows Sartino’s avatar trying to find peace, or perhaps a way out through acceptance, or the help of a friend. Starting off locked in a house, the video ends with a hopeful look outside of the house’s confines — as if perhaps it was a self-imposed state of isolation.
