America is more than diversity and pride and celebration. America is physically vast and this is often overlooked from the tight quarters of a dense city. This is why people truly love Americana. It is a musical style that maintains storytelling as a focus with specific themes borrowed from poetry and art that culminate in something that always feels simple and familiar despite all it can encompass. In the case of The Television of Cruelty, it borrows from several places. Orchestral awe and psychedelic influences creak in and out of a story of travel.
What makes this song stand out among similar peers is definitely the feeling of travel that’s embedded in the mix itself. There are times when you can hear the crowd and other times when you can swear the singing is studio-based. For all we know, this song was recorded in a car while quietly driving down a highway. There is a very pure sense of distance covered by the end of the track. For a song about traveling companions, it’s fitting that one feels as if they’ve arrived somewhere different than when the song began. Road Movie is a trip worth taking again and again.
-Paul Weyer
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