Today’s song takes on the more serious aspect of relationships, perhaps one that is hard to look at especially when you’re in the middle of it. The questioning feelings that arise from seeing your partner suddenly becoming distant, or a sudden breakup call. Seeing your once close friend drifting away. This single you’re about to hear handles it all both musically and visually!
Maggie Dave is a musical project run by a duo of visual artists Sean David Christensen and Mark
Christopher. Their music is closely bonded with visual works and becomes the soundtrack of characters Sean and Mark have created. The characters, whilst imaginary, explore the all-very-real feelings and struggles in the darkened aural world, handling a mixture of fragility and traumatic past, and ultimately embracing the weaknesses. Vivid and evocative soundscapes follow the moods, bringing depth and adding nuance as we listeners follow the lives of the characters. And it’s quite a bit like a movie – heavy emotions layered with melodies, vocal harmonies and instruments joining to tell a story in the most captivating way.
“We invite you to imagine the world of our songs after they stop. What do the streets look like? Are you indoors? Is it cold? As songwriters, Mark Christopher and I are compelled to craft narratives for the characters in our songs, much like Cassie designs her worlds for our music to inhabit, like a soundtrack. By listening to our lyrics, you’re eavesdropping into our characters’ private worlds of fantasies and obsessions that propel the dark, orchestral pop music we love to write.”
The duo’s newest release dropped recently, it’s a single titled “Old You”, featuring some of the most angelic vocal harmonics. Built upon the R&B elements, the song drips with grief and despair as the layered and interwoven vocals sing through the pain of falling out with someone they love. “I miss the old you!” echoes throughout the song, as the person stands in the distance, looking at the stranger he used to know so well. The endless array of questions in the lyrics get very directly illustrated by questionmark-eared man in the song’s video, floating through the haze of colliding emotions.
“Old You (Video Edit)” is brought to life by Cassie Shao (@karasucassie), a visionary animator I met through the film program at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. I work at the music school, my fourth-floor window overlooking the campus cinema where film students show their final year projects. One evening, on my way to the elevator, I saw a photocopied black & white flyer advertising the graduating classes’ thesis projects that would be screening later that week. After the show, I met Cassie. Her thesis film, “There Were Four of Us,” was incredible. I’m so grateful I got to see it when I did. A collage of digital and analog techniques, I was awed by the film’s command of color and the dreamlike atmosphere she wove her characters into, each one seeming to have a life of their own outside the confines of the flickering screen. Our first collaboration, the @maggiedavemusic music video “I’m Not Ready,” was awarded a Vimeo Staff Pick that August, and inaugurated our creative partnership that has continued to guide the visuals of the band. I’m honored to work with her and call her my friend.”
As I try and make sense in the crashing feelings in the world of love and friendship, this song sounds exactly what I witness going on in some of my friends’ lives. There are no answers to be seen, just a large quantity of questions and confusion, and the accompanying great sad. It must suck so much being in that whirlpool of feelings, and it is so hard to help a friend going through that. “Old You” is perhaps one of the cleanest representations of a relationship suddenly falling apart, and it can act as a mirror for those of us battling with the feelings.
Don’t forget to support this project and to follow on Instagram, Facebook, SoundCloud, YouTube, and Spotify. You can also check out their official website. If you enjoy their music and are able to provide monetary support, you might consider downloading it on Bandcamp.
You can obviously find it in the following Playlists: Less Than 1,000 Followers, Fresh Singles, Indie Only, Chill – Folk – Acoustic, and 12 New Songs This Week.
P.S. If you enjoy discovering new artists and fresh new music you can subscribe to this blog Less Than 1,000 Followers and follow the Playlist with all the artists that we have presented here!!!
This coverage was created via MusoSoup #Sustainablecurator