Circus Mind “Melt Away” (SINGLE)

Circus Mind’s new single is Melt Away, a refreshingly acoustic entry in a musical field dominated by electronic beats, electronically manipulated vocals, and vapid lyrics. Circus Mind’s alternative rock reminds me a lot of Top 40s hits from the noughties, back when you had more variety and more freedom of choice. Add to this smart writing, a fierce composition, and some excellent sound mixing for an independent release and it’s official.

URL: https://www.circusmindband.com/

The corporate machine and status quo is dead, long live post-modernist musicians in their prime. What Melt Away might not have in terms of out-and-out originality it more than makes up for in terms of craft and style. The song is pulsating and alive, with an angry undertone that feels sadly pertinent given everything happening on the world stage today.

The band’s frontman, Mark Rechler characterized the band as an unapologetic disciple of the seventies rock and funk scenes, but with a contemporary minded spin. “I miss Albums, Artwork, Liner notes, being able to touch and stare at it or clean your weed on the double albums,” he said, in an interview with Blues.Gr, also stating, “I play in at least ten different projects of various styles. Four of which are my babies. Each of those bands has a different function and sound. I kind of just write songs and then, when they are complete, it often seems obvious which pile that song would end up in. Circus Mind tend to play bars, small rooms and parties cause we are fun and upbeat. That lends itself to a certain type of song for sure.

But we boldly go into lots of styles, sometimes even within one song. Creative Drive… I got nothing but Creative drive! I am an Architect, Artist, Designer and Musician. It’s more a question of which of those is getting priority at the time. Not much time for Netflix or reading a good book. I am usually working on something.”

This kind of mindset and ethic is on full display with Melt Away. The song opens with an appropriately nihilistic proclamation of humanity taking their place with the dinosaurs and the stone ages, coupled with a contrastingly upbeat tempo and compositional structure. The effect is similar to the happy music-making in Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, a sort of gleeful embrace of the fact the world is ending, and while there may be nothing we can do to stop it we can be aware of the ills to alleviate the pain and suffering caused during its demise. Rechler’s youthful, caustic vocals make all of this grandstanding feel effortless and not shoehorned in, once again calling to mind a musical scene twenty years old.

Back when songs weren’t just entertainment but told stories, some with definitive beginnings, middles, and ends. “I think we are all made up of our musical influences,” Rechler said. “For me it was from the first music I listened to as little tike from my older sibling’s rooms (Beatles & Stones), sitting in the back of a wood paneled station wagon with my folks playing AM and FM soul and pop stations or 8-tracks, diving into Hippy and Prog music in Jr. High, to Punk, New wave and Alternative in High School…I went to…New Orleans and yet another World of Music was thrust into my Psyche…After some time, I got in tight with some top cats down there; Leo Nocentelli of the Meters, Dave Malone & Camille Baudoin of the New Orlean’s Radiators, and a bunch of the Neville brothers…I think if you told 10 different writers to write a song that sounds like Sly Stone, you would get 10 totally different and cool sounding songs that may or may not sound like Sly Stone, because it is synthesized through their own musical history.”

Mark Druery