Astronauts – “Flame Exchange”

There are the songs of the decade that you know, and then there’s the ones you don’t.

“Flame Exchange” is the emotional centerpiece of Astronauts’ 2014 debut album Hollow Ponds, a somber and all-acoustic record about the depression and hallucinations suffered by Dan Carney as he lied in a hospital, bed-ridden due to a severely fractured leg while in a nearly delirious morphine-enhanced state of mind.  He fantasized about Epping Forest in northeast London, and transformed his visions to a record.

“Flame Exchange” sounds like the best acoustic ballad that Brand New never wrote, with the caveat that this is actually quite a bit better than any of Lacey’s stripped-down crooners.  The bleakness of the atmosphere can be cut with a knife; I’m still in awe every time over how Carney manages to squeeze so much despair out of such a bare composition.  The gently picked guitar strings ring out with a sad eloquence, and Carney’s half-whispered vocals are spine-tingling and emotionally proximal all at the same time.  Lines like, “feels like I’m about to capsize…need some solid ground under my feet” speak to emotionally unhinged state that he was in while recording this album – this sensation of lost control, and a desire to re-attain balance.  The swelling strings and woodwinds that intertwine and dance across the song’s back half add splashes of color to the song’s densely morose aura, and when the song wraps up there’s this feeling that Carney just bared his soul to you.

And that’s because he did.

Read more from this decade at my homepage for Sowing’s Songs of the Decade.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JjmQsvmmmOBFnUjP7FLu4