While the holiday season seems to come increasingly faster, year after year: while some are still celebrating Dios De Los Muertos come November 2nd, others are already hanging from their storm drains— blindly stapling rainbow lights, and dangling twinkling, light-up icicles to and from their houses (enter Clark Griswold here please). Truthfully, time seems to look further and further into the future. Capitalistic exploits take precedent over seasonal bliss, or even integral, traditional institutions. Autumn, thus, folds effortlessly into the shadows of Winter; only to be relished by a solemn fading leaf, and then it is gone.

Well, for those grasping at the vanishing straws of now, fear not. For Kassel, Germany’s folk-ey, rock/pop group Milky Chance offers some kind of universal understanding and inquiring with their latest November 11th single “Cocoon”. While Cocoon, in essence, parlays the not quite stereotypical, but nearly archetypal journey of the small-time musicians gone big, now on the brink of _________  (well thats the part that nearly destroy them all, that open-ended fill-in-the-blank). The dreaded sophomore attempts of wildly successful debuts leave high-and-dry rockstars wondering what else they could possibly share of the human condition, now that private planes and “band aids” make everything so much more, well, un-relatable.

Ultimately like one’s fleeting opportunities to dwell a day or two more in the aftermath of Halloween and etc., so to does the rapidly progressing, more easily grasp-able/accessible commodities of musicians create higher and higher demand. Attention spans run short, and what was once a year-long charter, now vanishes into the “pasé” under a cumbersome pile of more new and more improved versions of something else. Milky Chance, via new single Cocoon, sings this slightly similar hymn of real-life confusion in the wake of their blossoming 2013 record, Sadnecessary.

While group members Clemens Rehbein, Philipp Dausch, and  Antonio Greger welcomed the fruits of their very tireless labors: a post-coital glow of mainstream success and endless touring, the obvious question of, “what now?” bubbled just below the surface of all that glitter. Cocoon plays on all of these peaks and valleys.

The single itself, on a purely surface-level listen effects the traditional modes of pop music: catchy, light-hearted guitar riffs complimented by current trending vocalist style and ultimately pinned to the dance-y thin-like, crisp hits to a solid, disco-like drum beat. But, below the “beach-vibe” aspirations begging for a big-time “remix” by one of those “big-time ” DJs, lies something so very surprising. Milky Chance may flirt with the dance-y lines of popular sound, but the group’s ability to synthesize an undoubtedly honest and questioning tone or rather emotion throughout the track elevates this follow-up to something so much more than today’s hit.

Although Rehbein and Dausch are open about the afflatus of their newest work—an ode to rediscovering or even retreating back to a formerly known “serenity”, i.e. pre debut-album phenomena, their music, for better, speaks for itself. While Rehbein explains Cocoon as “trying to find a place where you can be yourself and not be distracted; to slow down and reflect on yourself.” Fortunately, through Rehbein and company’s efforts to maintain their original spirit, and value the now, not the future pressures—does Milky Chance successfully impart both a catchy, yet underlying bitterly honest assessment of life now and thus, forever. No explanation needed boys.