To invoke the worst person you know just made a great point meme, all these hustle-culture IG accounts infiltrating your feed do have a point when it comes to complacency commandeering a healthy sense of development. Personally, I don’t think increasing my budget for NFTs or whatever will dramatically improve my life, but the observation that achieving a sense of comfort can be a dangerous pitfall when it overlooks the achievable dream you’ve been putting off does feel a little on-point for many of us.
In so many words, this is the theme running throughout Dave DiAngelis’ new album as Helenor, A public place. “If you’re consistently unhappy in your life, then you should change something,” he’s shared as the album’s primary ethos, which comes into play yet again on the project’s fourth single, “Suck.” Over driving piano and acoustic guitar, DiAngelis sings of heeding impulses that contradict what the angel on his shoulder lucidly suggests: “You disintegrate / The more you give in,” he sings. “‘Suck’ is about how easy it is to justify a life you never actually wanted for yourself,” he shares, “how it sometimes feels easier to convince yourself things are good enough rather than ascend the mountain of changing your situation. The big trap.”
As for the warm, folk-rock instrumental, DiAngelis notes that it came together from a voice note after attending a songwriter workshop led by Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold. “[School of Song] is this pretty amazing songwriting community that has become super generative for me,” he notes. “I believe the prompt was to try and resuscitate an old idea you had started but never finished. These chords were just laying dormant in my voice memos, and when I sat down to reapproach them the lyrics and melody just sort of fell out.”
Check out a lyric video for the track below, and pre-order A public place ahead of its April 12 release via Mtn Laurel Recording Co. here.
