Lost Coast by The Mountain Violets was submitted without a foreword or description – just a Spotify link that’s been chilling in our submissions pool for about three months now. I’m going to take this opportunity to rouse it from hibernation and gush about it shamelessly for the next thousand words or so.

This tune is a rumination on a relationship faded by time – old bedrocks have eroded away, and without a cornerstone to anchor to, nostalgia yields to despondence. It’s a fear I harbor myself; I’ve been blessed with indispensable friends I can’t envision my life without, and yet, there’s nothing that the ebb of time can’t lay claim to.

How apt, then, that the opening lyrics read:

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I’m holding on
To a time we both remember
But the feeling’s gone

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I found the soundscape crafted here equally complementary. The timbres employed throughout the instrumentation are predominantly rounded – classical guitar riffs rather than acoustic, muted piano chords, and a synth with a blunted attack. Warm tones, rather than bright, are prioritised here. The harmonic color contrasting my leans dark and fuzzy, with chord extensions flourishing our voicings and a tonal centre that skews minor. I find the aural metaphor compelling: at the core lies love and tenderness, even if it’s shrouded in mourning of once-pure quintessence lost to time.

I was further spellbound by the subtle word painting that the work employs in the second half of its first verse. It goes:

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You tried to take
One last breath before surrender
As we run away against the wind.

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The moment “you” is sung, the vocals diverge into two harmonies, with lines that struggle to settle into non-discordant tones. In other words, the tension between the voices manifests with the distinction of “you” and “I”. Once the line is dissolved into a singular “we,” the harmonies are able to conclude their strophe a resonant interval apart. I don’t know how much better you could convey the struggle of two people who may no longer fit perfectly together, but want to keep trying.

Melody construction remains exemplary even beyond allegorical value. Consistently, an underlying musical intuition unveils itself in the nooks and crannies of every line. The vocals of the second verse sing:

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Sunlight will shine
On our home upon the hillside
That we left behind us
Why can't I rest
With this life I have?
With you

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The melody dips to a new low at the words “behind us,” and reaches new highs at “Why can’t I rest with this life,” expressing inklets of dismay and angst respectively in such a seamless, idiomatic way. Up till this point, the melody has also been jumping around the same five scale degrees, only breaking this mould upon the line “with you”. Once again, there’s no better way to represent how we can actualize our ability to grow as people through others if we earnestly try.

Now, that’s enough about melody – allow me to proceed to rave about harmony.

Once the chorus hits, we’re instantly transported to a totally new key, with a tonal color that’s a shade brighter, yet cooler. Think sunset-red to sky-blue. The effect of this, I find, is that its words carry with them an awakened lucidity – confessions pouring from sudden revelation. The deep-seated poignancy of –

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I thought I could have it all
But I just wanna
Go back home
Make life slow down
Visions of an afternoon
When there's nothing left to prove
And I just have you.

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 – hits all the harder. The earnest conviction with which these words are said, buttressed by the heightened yearning conveyed by the melody’s higher tessitura, really got to me on my first listen. (‘Tessitura’ is the relative range of a particular instrument. In this case, the vocals sing at their highest range thus far, and the minute strain that maintaining the range demands imbues a certain lucidity and earnestness to the expression.)

And I haven’t even mentioned how memorable the chorus is! I could harmonise with it by the time it came around again.

Then, the tonality gives way to the verse’s original warm-dark color, with all its tender, angsty apprehension. Like the sudden hope that comes hand-in-hand with the realization of what it is that you’ve been hoping for just evaporating away, overcome by our existing insecurity. Man.

And there’s still one last bit of harmony to rhapsodise about! The final chorus’s curtain call commences after an instrumental interlude, and its key has been modulated down such that we’re back to a dark-warm color of the verses. But, if you remember – we’ve already established the earnest yearning of the chorus beforehand. By maintaining that meaning in the original dark-warm tone of the verses, you get a confession of love that’s fully cognizant of existing tribulations, less the unsustainable hope that immediately follows a revelation. “I just wanna go back home” is now less of a proclamation and more of an olive branch – come home with me.

(If there’s one last thing to say about the harmony before we conclude, it’s that these guys truly know their music theory. Sorry, Mountain Violets, I’m going to assimilate your chord progressions into my own repertoire. And I’m gatekeeping them from the rest of you for good measure, too. Sorry.)

I suppose I harbor a soft spot for this single because it answers one of my most pressing dreads: Time might take some of our most precious relationships from us, but there’s nothing stopping us from taking them back. Maybe we can’t have it all, but we can endeavour to have each other.

All this to say, here’s another track I’m really looking forward to looping over the next few days. Or weeks. Or months. This is far from the first submission that has won me over, and I eagerly await more!

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(You can find The Mountain Violets on Instagram and Spotify.)

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