I hadn’t realized until listening to Green Light Cameras’ gorgeous “Weather Balloon” what a soft spot I have in my heart for drum machines and keyboards. And a softer spot for pop music executed properly. How’s that, you say? For starters, wholly accepting of the terrific shittiness that life can be. Embracing the abyss and then seeking to escape it, living with one foot in the grave—wanting to just be an eagle, for chrissakes! Not this “party all the time because we’re all young and beautiful social media influencers” bullcrap. Sure, it’s fun to hear a stomping four-on-the-floor and clap your hands and sing along with the crowd, but it’s an empty, transitory joy. Sing those pop lyrics later, home alone in your bed, and see how fun they are.
Phil Chamberlin knows better. As Green Light Cameras, he takes the essential elements of pop and crafts works of art. On “Weather Balloon,” he begins by imagining himself the aforementioned eagle and proceeds to deliver some of the most visual poetry you’re likely to hear in his all-but-beaten baritone. The straight-eight pulse of the drum machine serves as a metronome, a time-keeper for the few points at which the regal keyboards have a break to gather themselves for the next round of the song’s simple-but-stately progression. Throughout the song, the avian metaphor is released in favor of grounded truths, pained longings, and morbid realizations, but all of these lead to the song’s essential refrain. It’s the question we have all asked ourselves at one point or another in our lives: “How the fuck am I gonna get my drunk ass home tonight?”
Okay, maybe you’ve never actually been drunk or even had a peet of the moloko plus. But that’s a bit of the beauty in good pop music: metaphors abound. Have you never been so depressed, anxious, or miserable that you did something crazy like go out and run around with people known for making bad decisions? Or pressed the accelerator to the floor on an open road with tears streaming down your cheeks to see how fast you can really go? Or eaten an entire tub of ice cream, a jar of peanut butter, and a box of thin mints in a single sitting? In any (or all) of those cases, did you not once suddenly realize how out of control you were? Did you not realize that you had traveled to the brink of oblivion and then had to ask yourself how you got to this point? And how you were going to get back to where you began?
There, you’re getting it. Now, listen to “Weather Balloon” again and let yourself be taken to whichever place the music of Green Light Cameras takes you.