When you turn over the page, and you're trying to figure out which word to let the fresh ink of a Gothic drop-cap highlight as you start a new chapter, where do you start? That is the question VK Lynne is asking, as her solo career is emerging from the chrysalis, and her wings are ready to glisten in the sun. It is a different time than when she released the "Brain Waves" single, let alone when "Whiskey Or Water" came out. She is a different person, with a band's worth of experience to open new paths of creative wonder.
To anchor all of these whirling ideas, VK has tethered her mischief to her roots as a musician. The first taste of what "The Spider Queen" will be serving us is a cover, yes, but it cuts to the heart of who VK is. This song from Melisa Etheridge exists in the same fusion of blues and rock VK is steeped in, and there is psychology in the lyrics that reinforces thoughts I already had, and that perhaps remind us certain things are best said through the distance someone else's words allow.
"I'm free as a fire, and change is in the air," the song tells us. That is very much true, and there is subtext in those words I'm not qualified to read into, yet I can't help but think about. Being on your own can be liberating, but it can also be terrifying. Every choice has a world of possibilities, and every choice lands as your responsibility. In a band situation, the push and pull of personalities is a compromise that creates an identity that isn't quite any member, even if it is every member. On your own, you are laying yourself bare to the audience.
This song is a perfect fit for VK. When it was announced, I listened to the original version (Sadly, despite adoring "Come To My Window" and the other crossover hits she had, my knowledge of Melissa Etheridge's music never advanced past there), and I could immediately hear tones that echoed VK's voice. I don't know if I would say that about the other songs I know, but this one is natural, and perhaps has always been an Easter egg waiting for the moment it was necessary to sing.
VK's 'blues metal' vision imbues the song with a massive wall of guitars once things crank up, saturated to the point of the distortion feeling like walking out into the humidity on a hot summer day. There is weight in the simple chords, and that saturation is a white noise for VK's voice to cut through. She is piercing, howling a cry of both pain and excitement. For one chapter to start, another must end, and our feelings can be too complicated to be captured by anything other than sound. When you hear her voice, you might understand.
"You live and you learn, and you learn to hold on/And time will make it heal, and time will make it gone," we are told. Isn't that the truth. Whether those things become scars, or the synapses grow too far apart for the memories to still fire, the past loses its power when we build a new future. The memory palace is merely the adornment inside a snow globe we can let settle into an eerie calm.
New chapters and new beginnings allow us to redefine ourselves. Some of us aren't talented enough to paint a different expression on our faces, forever trapped in the confines of a narrow box. VK Lynne metamorphoses to escape those shackles, imbuing the power of fresh ideas. Blues metal is her latest, and from the sound of this song, it's about amplifying the power of emotions so they can break through even the toughest of exteriors. It seems to have cracked mine already.
"Don't you want to know what the dark and the wild and the different know?" the song asks. Yes, yes I do. Our spider queen is spinning a web like Charlotte, and in the center, I can read the message; Welcome.
"The Different" releases January 15th. Pre-save the song here!
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