tUnE-yArDs - 'nowhere, man'

September 22, 2020 - 4AD

Indie duo Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner are back on the scene with a new tUnE-yArDs release for the first time in two years, arriving just in time with just what I need—an artsy punky worldbeat pop explosion. Their new single ‘nowhere, man’ is tense like atmospheric pressure crushing a closed bottle full of air. I’ve been luxuriating in anger from the turmoil of this year, and this song makes me want to go outside into the cold rain, blare it out into the streets and scream, making as much noise as possible and absolutely losing myself to a moment of sweet release through chaos. Garbus’s endlessly deep voice cracks sometimes as it commands the claustrophobia we’re all feeling right now, backed into a corner, unable to fly, forced to fight for our lives. The song is strenuous and maintains the percussion focus that’s signature to the tUnE-yArDs sound, thick, booming, tumultuous but not lacking structure, a cacophony of noise that embraces the ecstasy of being aloud that comes from a true percussionist’s heart. 

The title ‘nowhere, man’ screams for us to draw a parallel to the infamous ‘Nowhere Man’ by the Beatles circa 1965. The latter, considered an existential turning point in popular songwriting, is about escaping into a state of empty complacency that’s specifically modern, an option birthed from a society with surplus. Circa 2020 is squeezing that surplus into new shapes that reveal what surplus protects and what it does not. We don’t have the “nowhere” of Lennon’s nowhere man parable to escape to, so tUnE-yArDs flips the title’s meaning by adding a comma. There’s nowhere, man, “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.” In the light of day we’re pushed out into the streets to take back the shapes of their surplus which is our stolen sustenance.☔