Photo Credit: Kalyn Oyer
Today, singer Sylvan Esso released a new single called “On & On” which will be on the singer’s new album Ow ∞ out on September 11th. “On & On” is about Esso finding heaven in everyday moments while reflecting on resilience and fleeting transparence. The visuals consist of Esso jumping in water and swimming in water over and over again with the lyrics in the middle of the screen, to symbolize an ongoing task or feeling that someone does or experiences on a daily basis. The lyrics show this by Esso saying, “And it goes on and on and on you see, On and on in memory, On and on and on for me”, “My body pulls myself through it, Baby knows whеre heaven is, I wokе up there one day” and “Every highway flowing free, On the airplane trailing, Maybe it still follows me, Just as I chase it endlessly”. The bass, drums-percussion, guitar, drums, and guitar-percussion with “pairing a bubbling, layered scape of sound with intimate meditations on love, recollection and the search for peace amid life’s trash, noise and chaos” (Ow ∞ Press Release). Overall, give the song alternative rock feel that allows listeners to think about the lyrics in their entirety.
“Ow ∞ is both a technicolor totem of personal destruction, and an ecstatic invitation to party – like recent singles “Hot Slob” (hailed by The New York Times as “an infectious and defiant ode to living messily”) and the Sigur Rós-sampling “Concrete Glen” (which NPR Music called “one of the best Sylvan Esso songs I’ve ever heard”)” … “Most of the tracks on Ow ∞ are Meath’s first vocal takes, while arrangements and ideas are excavated, painted over and held together by the largest community of musicians Sylvan Esso have ever worked with on an LP. Featuring six different drummers in total, as well as live guitar, bass, keys, vibraphone, woodwinds, Innato, organ, piano and electronics, Meath and Sanborn are joined by Daniel Aged (Frank Ocean, Dijon), BJ Burton (Bon Iver, Charli XCX), Matt Douglas (the Mountain Goats), Glenn Kotche (Wilco), Jake Luppen (Hippo Campus, Samia), TJ Maiani (Weyes Blood, Neneh Cherry), James Mapley-Brittle (GRRL), Buddy Ross (Frank Ocean, Bon Iver), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes) and Joe Westerlund (Megafaun) throughout the record, filling hard drives with 5-10 songs at a time, some sticking and some not” (Ow ∞ Press Release).
