If you thought that the worlds of education and music don’t overlap, the artistry of Brisbane singer-songwriter Sam Wrangle would prove you wrong.
With years of experience as a high school English teacher, the musician draws from the peccadilloes of the playground to produce Everything Secondary, a new single borne out of his school’s staffroom.
After being quizzed on whether he smokes weed in front of his fellow teachers, Wrangle “didn’t know how to respond,” he explained in a press statement.
“This rattled me quite a bit, there was an audience [and] it made me think: is it really that obvious?” Naturally, Wrangle used the experience to craft Everything Secondary, an acoustic indie-rock gem that ruminates on the interplay of his personal and professional self.
The track opens with the rustic warmth of jangly guitar strums, with Wrangle’s panning vocals distorted in the spacey vein of a Tame Impala cut.
The influence of Impala is clear, particularly given the single’s distinct and enrapturing psychedelic feel. Here, Wrangle’s drawn-out timbre stretches acrobatically around electric stings and glittery synths.
The is perhaps best described as hazy psychedelia, but Everything Secondary refuses to be bound by any one particular sound. Elsewhere, Wrangle jams alongside fuzz rock grooves, and layers his vocals on the kind of repeated refrain you might find on a traditional pop song.
This non-formulaic approach not only makes for a captivating listen — with ear-catching flairs found throughout the entire runtime — but also gets to the heart of the track’s message around our split personalities.
At school, Wrangle must uphold the “uniform policy”, but his opposing teenage whimsies are never too far out of mind. The singer looks back at his first-ever spliff “back at Red Hill,” recalling the experience with a tangible fondness.
This is juxtaposed to a current profession Wrangle describes as “prim and proper,” with the effect feeling like a nostalgic rumination on the changes we endure as we come of age.
“If my students are receptive, that’s all that matters,” Wrangle said in a press statement. Everything else is secondary.” Everything Secondary is lifted from the tracklist of Wrangle’s upcoming self-titled album, which is set for release on November 17 and includes the already released singles Opposition and Just Living Really.
In the meantime, listen to Sam Wrangle’s new single Everything Secondary below.
