Disclaimer (legitimate disclaimer, not an April Fool’s gag): Team GDW’s Richard Clark submitted this single review a few weeks ago, which has finally made it into the posting rotation for today. The Sarandons have since released a follow up single, titled “Lately, I believe,” which we have provided a link to at the conclusion of this article. The focus of this article is for “Caught in a Dream.”
Just the title alone of The Sarandons’ new single release, “Caught in a Dream,” sounds like a song for our time. Dripping guitars carrying a lonely, world-weary vocal wreaks of lock-down fatigue. That’s not to say it isn’t also beautiful, the sort of song that you can wrap up in to help get you through this strange part of our history.
It’s also a truism to suggest some of the best songs ever written simply reflect our own feelings back at us, the singer in that sense becoming our own voice. Maybe you can subtly hear influences like Wilco, The Band, Kurt Vile, Dr. Dog, and The War on Drugs, but The Sarandons’ sound is also particular to themselves. That might be in the indie-rock balladeering behind the track, or in a broader sense of the forthcoming extended play, their own particular brand of rock & roll, spanning Neo-psychedelia, roots-rock, Americana and indie-rock.
“This past year has been the ultimate test of whether familiarity breeds contempt,” says vocalist/guitarist Dave Suchon. “When you’re marooned at sea together, all sorts of things start to creep in. More insidious than contempt, the people we’re locked in with start to become another piece of furniture in our lives. Days are on repeat and it’s the struggle against these enemies that we tried to capture in this song.”
Remarkably then, this particular track almost never saw the light of day, its origins the consequence of producer Dan Hosh (City & Colour, Arkells) simply asking whether the band had anything slower and more melancholic to round out their upcoming EP. It was the conduit for the lightning to strike, and within a few days all the pieces, including the dreamy intro/outro fell together. Lyrics were drawn from the zeitgeist to describe those mundane struggles of a relationship, yet however the track happened to be born, it is largely irrelevant or of little intrigue.
Maybe all the listener really needs to do is press play and embrace its’ sad beauty for themselves. Maybe one day things will get better, but for the time being, the real value of being “Caught in a Dream,” like the many great songs preceding it, is that it helps connects us to ourselves by articulating our own experience and emotions. I recommend you play this one on repeat until you no longer need to, then hold on to it forever.
Artwork Credit: Patricia Zimecki
Enjoy the new track, “Lately, I Believe” here: https://youtu.be/5QnTYDt-o7I
Music has been a lifelong passion, a journey that as a child embraced the late 60's counter culture and has lasted until the present day. Despite trying to play guitar for the best part of 45 years, to his own frustration, never much beyond the first four bars of “Stairway to Heaven.” A self-confessed vinyl junkie, his other interests include collecting music memorabilia, old Muhammad Ali fight programs, and watching film. He lives alone in Nottingham (England) and still uses the term “Groovy” - these two facts may be intrinsically connected.
