“Float” captures that sweet mixture of languid desolation through a curious crossover of standards-style jazz and dream pop.
There’s sad singers, there’s other sad singers, and then there’s Kyle Maraton, who continues to be a revelation as The Midnight Greetings.
His signature dejected drawl has been a joy to behold – yes, I have been enjoying his misery, against my better instincts as a decent person – and in his new single “Float,” that joy is not only renewed but even further dialed up.
Purportedly about pining after someone so much you’re physically spent, “Float” captures that sweet mixture of languid desolation through a curious crossover of standards-style jazz and dream pop. The former, of course, typically swells into a beautiful climax, while latter wallows in repetition.
And I only bring this up to say how dissimilar the impulse of each is from each other, and yet The Midnight Greetings pulls off the paradox with ease. There is no redemption arc in his languor (unlike something like, say, “The Golden Age” from Beck’s ‘Sea Change’), and there is no protracted joke languishing in the belly (the way something like, say, Cracker’s cover of the Carpenters’ “Rainy Days and Mondays” makes me feel).
There is, quite simply: the nagging desire, and the dragging fatigue that shit brings.
“You come visit me in my dreams / but you’ll always float away whenever we speak,” Maraton sings in a key moment in the song, you just know he’s a guy who tries hard to try little – don’t worry, I intend to qualify – which is to say, he’s a capsule thinker, but also a capsule feeler.
His material is the antithesis to maximalist, overthinking psych rock: decisive in its languor, sure-footed in its sleepy equilibrium. Admittedly, “Float” is more a sleeper compared to its predecessors – most notably the beat-inflected “On My Mind” and “Spinning” – but not any less compelling.
Maraton, in fact, describes it as “a break from the usual, but just one of the many versions of me in my creative era,” which is comforting as a proof-of-concept statement for his yet-forthcoming EP or LP.
Still very much a one-man operation – he sings as well as plays guitar, bass, synth, and drums on the track – there is no doubt in my mind that Maraton’s subsequent singles will employ a similar tack: understated, honest, true. With that is my hope for new indie of the confessional vein: that like The Midnight Greetings, they won’t equate hook-y sentiment with hokey sentimentality.
Listen to “Float” today.