Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
Coming into focus with a sly drumbeat as its opening salutations, we begin with Nuke the Soup’s “Oceans and Mountains” with a confident instrumental strut that only gets more swaggering as we press on in the track. Whether we’re watching the sunshine-clad music video for “Oceans and Mountains” or just listening to the track by itself, the feelings of excitement that come exploring the world outside of the big city lights tend to be the same. Nuke the Soup want to get us out of our heads and onto a better trajectory here, and their timing couldn’t be more appropriate this July.
The chorus isn’t the only juncture of this song that feels like it’s saturated in feel-good energy; truth be told, there’s not a moment here that I would describe as being pessimistic. The lyrics discuss the search while the music propels us forward as though we’re on the trail of some distant romance that will appear when we are least expecting it. Nuke the Soup’s principal songwriter and frontman Mark Davison doesn’t hold back from getting imagistic with his words, but the music that cushions them is perhaps even more expressive in some instances here.
“Oceans and Mountains” lasts a mere four minutes and change in total, but the potential effect it could have on listeners – and primarily longtime fans of this project – is likely to set-in long after the music has come to a conclusion. Mark Davison shines like a superstar of a singer/songwriter in this single, and all in all, I would say that this is the tightest look we’ve seen from Nuke the Soup so far. Their sophomore LP took nine years to reach us, but with the momentum this release could possibly stir up, we hopefully won’t have to wait as long for a third studio album.
Loren Sperry
