There’s a miraculous clear-headedness to Parasouls’ happy-sad comeback single. It’s simple but not simplistic, ecstatic but with an elegiac underbody.
Nobody calls it this, but some tunes I file under “ladida music,” and I don’t intend it as a positive, but I don’t wield it as a pejorative either. It’s a reference to a state of being that, I realize, is becoming more and more difficult to capture as time, trial, and tragedy weigh you down like a sack of hammers.
That state of being – rife with “[a] sense of wonder in one’s youth” – is the unanimous playground of indie-pop quartet Parasouls. And perhaps that “ladida” spirit is due largely to their literal youth, but it’s also the wide-eyed vim they display even in the face of tragedy.
This is very much evident in their latest single “Someday,” an ode to the plodding recovery one is forced to reckon with upon seeing an old flame with a new love, specifically “someone you used to make plans with,” as the band shares in a release.
Does pain sound like records like ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’? Is regret the exclusive colony only of ‘Blood on the Tracks’ and its ilk? Yes – relax, relax – I know it’s borderline heretical to bring up these titles in the same breath as young domestic talent, but when misfortune is coated in chocolate, we forget what it is we’re actually chewing.
“Someday” comes, it appears, from a sincere place of well-wishing. “You’re happy for them because of all the things they have achieved,” the band writes, “but you still long for the days where you both had so much fun dreaming up those plans together.”
And that miraculous clear-headedness is conveyed to great effect by Dani Dimaano’s wistful singing, Igoy Dimaano’s tasteful fretwork, Joshua Gaces’ tuneful bass playing, and Migui Arguelles’ reliable time-keeping. The fact that it’s the band’s first outing as a four-piece is belied by the track’s palpable rapport.
“We took our time trying to figure out what we wanted and where we wanted to go,” the quartet says. “You can see our individuality as musicians mold together into one big Parasouls sound,” they add, and it’s readily apparent. In “Someday,” they negotiate their as-yet-clipped wings, then weave their loves into the tapestry (i.e., Alvvays, Fazerdaze, Lunar Vacation, Lucy Dacus, Beach Bunny, Wolf Alice).
When you hear them spin their best yarns – singing lines like “I always knew this is where you were going to be / Writing stories about the old and the what-could-be / I enter a room we used to adore / It took me back to yesterday” – you know you’re faced with something akin to a mellow bellow.