On their latest single, The Grasping Straws spin social commentary into raw, whimsical melodies and acoustic-driven soundscapes.
The Grasping Straws are back with their kitschy and nuanced new song, quarantine halloween.
Written and recorded by frontwoman Mallory Feuer during lockdown, the single is a light and dazy melody that masks some much darker lyricism. Navigating the pandemic, America’s civil unrest, and much more, quarantine halloween isn’t one to overlook.
There’s a real whimsical, scrawled feel about this song. Sonically, quarantine halloween is a ditty that’s been scribbled in the margins of anti-folk, but thematically, the track cuts much deeper. With self-harmonised vocals and a talent for storytelling, frontwoman Mallory Feuer sings of the pandemic, the disintegration of democracy in America, and civil unrest.
It’s a soft, haunting melody that you could have your morning coffee with on a rainy day and listen to under the dead of night, blanketed in stars. Feuer’s shimmering vocals acts as an instrument in its own right, cloaking the song with a quality that feels both raw and velvety all at once.
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“I woke up on Halloween this year with an idea of this song in my head,” frontwoman Mallory Feuer writes. “I spent the day playing around with it and thinking about how with the pandemic virus, high death toll, and the state of our democracy in America, this is by far the scariest Halloween I’ve ever experienced. I wanted to see if I could write, record, and mix the song by myself in one day, and I feel like performing it as a solo-acoustic track is emblematic of what musician life in isolation has been like. There are two voices, and they are both my own.”
Stay tuned for the first single Help from The Grasping Straws upcoming EP, along with an experimental VHS music video by Erica Schreiner, out December 21.
Check out the single below:
