by Jonathan Bannister (@j_utah)
Sometimes words aren’t enough. They get in the way, or don’t express what it is you’re feeling, what it is you want to get across. Eddie Garcia deals with those things. Armed with a guitar and a wide assortment of stomp boxes and electronics he releases thoughtful, internal, mood heavy music under the name 1970s Film Stock. Birds, his second album is out August 11 and we have the premiere for you right now.
There is a feeling of wanting to take flight across these seven songs, but it is flight that doesn’t ever really come. One is reminded of dreaming of bigger and better, locked in their room, wanting to leave it all but things like responsibility, physical means, or just good old-fashioned fear clip our wings and keeps us grounded to the confines of the same old life. The title song opens the album with this yearning, a wanting to be free. But it’s a song that never quite opens up and takes flight, much like our caged in protagonist. “In View” and “Slack” continue that feeling of looking ahead and dreaming but dreaming is all it is. The reality never lets it take root and develop fully. “Sling for Skeletons” lashes out at this reality. With its Carpenter like pulse underneath, it roils and simmers into an anger that wants to unleash and is dangerously close to doing so. “We’re Not Going Anywhere,” maybe resigned to the life it’s living, looks to express the beauty in the life it does have. “Walk Away” is the new day dawning. It’s now or never the guitar pleads with itself, but it can’t find it within to break free. “Victory Repeating” feels like a play on words. It does have the feeling of finally soaring but it repeats the same line over and over, like it’s trying to convince itself.
Of course, this is all highly subjective. This is the beauty of instrumental music. It is open for you to assign the meaning, to lay it over the framework of whatever structure your life has. To place it within your own context, to let it guide and soundtrack your late nights, early mornings, and in betweens. What do you hear through the notes? What feeling does it invoke deep down? There’s only one way to find out.