“Life is such a strange thing. Even after certain things have happened to them, no matter how awful the experience, people still go on eating and drinking, going to the toilet and washing themselves – living, in other words.” – Han Kang, ‘The Vegetarian’.
Such is life, and there may come a period when you fall down the wrong end of the rabbit hole and question what the meaning of this all may be; a rhetorical circle of existence that serves only to add more chaos to the fire, and inconsistently fuel the abyss of time ticking tomorrow’s, and greater expectations.
When the heart is a glass both half empty and half full, and the pages of abandoned diaries aim to rewrite their history by means of self-progress that was promised in March and lost in the pit of our new decade, we turn to psych-crooners Tiña, the instrumental fancies of ‘ground control to Major Tom’, to shift the focus from feeling down, to levelly-grounded.
A shared milestone with seminal label Speedy Wunderground, Tiña’s debut LP ‘Positive Mental Health Music’ is defiantly uplifting and frontman Josh Loftin, has the voice of a 60’s elf and the mindset of a generation navigating a world of impending doom. Despite all obstacles, Loftin elevates joy no matter the ‘Dip’ nor psychological substance as if at any given notice his thoughts might break-free to form an infinity loop of warm-fuzz, strung mindfully between two grand wishing trees and encouraging the mind to sit back and wander down eleven individual tracks all leading towards one, very pink, euphoria.
Whilst ‘Golden Rope’ cries for fearless steadfast, ‘Growing in Age’ is the aftermath of five souls howling into the cosmos with such collective-consciousness, moon-dust breaks loose from the cracked ceiling of a South-East London studio and into the tea-leaves of a poetry-club come support-group down-below. We’re getting older faster than our daydreams allow and yet the answer to timeless happiness is momentarily clear- feeling fine comes from “writing it down” and when the present-day is filled with humour, fantastical subversion and a spiritual ‘Rooster’, there’ll always be plenty more to come.
Repurposing Daniel Johnston’s philosophies of ‘Living It For The Moment’, ‘New Boi’ is wonderfully restriction-free; like spending a lazy Sunday afternoon in a tin-can neighbourhood, painting picket fences alternate shades of splendour so as to form a fully aligned rainbow come sundown. It may not all make sense, but it sure as hell feel’s real and all the greyscale of our universe bears very little weight when with Tiña we can see the light at the end of the Yellow Brick Road.
Life can be fucking terrifying. We’re all individually doing our best and there’s no two ways about it. ‘Positive Mental Health Music’ is no more a mantra than a core reason to keep on keeping on. This is exactly what we needed and Tiña, with all the fabled loving’s of the ‘Owl & the Pussycat’ and a pink cowboy hat by their side, are our knights in barrier-less armour- if they so wish to be.
‘Positive Mental Health Music’ is out now via Speedy Wundergound. Order your copy here.
The brand new issue of So Young is out now. It’s sold out in print but you can read the digital edition below.