I’ve been living with Sparkbird’s “Minor Holiday” for a little more than a week—listening in my car, at my desk, in my earbuds as I drift off to sleep—and it’s been a real pleasure. The rhythmic backbone of the song is a piano arpeggio progression that feels like it’s always moving forward, even as it turns now and then into a melancholy corner, even as it cycles back to its beginning and then repeats. As I listen, I look down and notice that one foot is tapping the other, that my head is nodding “yes,” and that I’ve been squinting slightly, as if looking into a source of light. The song ends and I fumble around to hit “play” again.
“Minor Holiday” is written and arranged by Stephan Nance, who also plays the piano and sings the lead vocal. Nance’s vocal is quiet and fluid, dynamic and expressive, savoring the sounds of the words as much as their meaning. The lyrics paint a stark picture of a planet succumbing to environmental disaster—“Half the yard is burning / And the other half is covered in snow”—and an even starker picture of the planet’s inhabitants, who “forget to get upset” and whose ability to adapt has only helped to foster their collective delusion: “As the world is ending / We can keep pretending / That none of this will matter in an hour.” Curiously, the hard-hitting message of the song is tempered and inflected by the sweetness and harmony of its musical sensibility. It doesn’t feel like a mistake that the bitterness and hand-wringing of lyrics like “Seasons grievings to us all” and “Shall I compare thee to / The Judgment Day” are juxtaposed with music that reminds us of the miraculous sensitivity, inventiveness, and wonder that humans are capable of expressing.
Sparkbird is the project of Nance, but “Minor Holiday” features remarkable contributions from Mathias Kunzli (percussion), Yoed Nir (strings), Jeni Magana (upright bass), Lisa Parrott (clarinet), and Greta Gertler (backing vocals). And it’s all the more remarkable that these musicians recorded their parts remotely from locations as disparate as Los Angeles, New York City, and Sydney, Australia. Nance, based in Portland, ostensibly communicated the sensibilities and nuances of “Minor Holiday” across the jittery and glitching platforms of our ongoing digital condition, just as the disaster of Australia’s bushfires were giving way to the emergence of the COVID pandemic. If the song does aim to provide a modicum of hope and optimism (and your guess is as good as mine), then it must be in the astonishing collaboration of these far-flung souls who, despite everything, were able to create a beautiful song together and send it out into the ether.