Jónsi - Exhale

April 23, 2020 - Krunk

The year 2020 is a monstrous distortion of space time. We’re blazing a new trail we didn’t want to take and dragging the leaden sticks of our grief through the ground behind us to mark the way. The weather mocks us as the seasons pass faster than they should with great beauty and futility, reminding us just how little is in our control. And fresh from the Icelandic spring, Jónsi’s new single ‘Exhale’ is music for the action of this moment. 

Like a lullaby, he sings to us a truth we already know, but one so simple we forget it almost as soon as we hear it: “Breathe in, breathe out, learn and talk, let go, everyone's alright. It’s just the way it is, it isn’t your fault, just let it go now.” He repeats the message like a mantra for over five minutes with radical empathy. The whole track functions as a meditation for healing individual paralysis from collective trauma so we can find the energy to keep fighting for the lives we share. 

In happier times, ‘Exhale’ would likely come off as a little bit cheesy bread—high emotional swells in the canopy from ancient mystical roots, a lofty anthemic build from start to finish, an almost childlike wisdom in the quality of Jónsi’s ephemeral vocals, an evocation of the desire to escape back to belief in things we can’t explain empirically. But right now, it offers us something we need constantly and desperately, wherever we can get it—a reminder that, when we don’t know what to do, we can start by being present and acknowledging our place in the present. Then go from there. ☔