I Guess That’s Who We Are

Morgan Geist “City of Smoke and Flame” – Geist’s song seems to concern some sort of middle class guy who must travel regularly for work, leaving him alone in his head as he spends far too much time in his car, and in strange yet generally uninteresting places. Between the mildly paranoid, spaced-out tone of the arrangement and his cool, fragile vocal tone, Geist portrays his protagonist as a nice, ordinary guy who is just beginning to disconnect from his world and his own emotions. The lyrical focus is placed on specific, mundane images — a flick of the wrist that turns out the light, shaking a leg to keep awake in the car — but the detail is mostly between the lines, as the feeling of aloofness sets in, and it becomes more and more clear that the character feels passive and helpless. (Click here to buy it from Environ Records.)