“Wait For Rain” and giving water through troubling times

I want to talk about the recent and devastating wildfires out of California. The Palisades fire and subsequent blazes have now consumed more than 40,000 acres—a staggering area three times the size of Manhattan. Over a week since the fires began, both the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire, which ignited at the base of the Angeles National Forest, remain active and uncontained as other parts of Los Angeles are now under siege, to my understanding as I tune in to the news for coverage.

The situation remains dire, with fire crews working around the clock to contain these blazes amid challenging terrain, scarce resources, and evacuations.

A good friend of mine was actually one of the people who lost their home in those fires. She’s a darling amongst people but was also someone who was for lack of a better term, always on the grind. You would assume that given she lived in California, she was making a lot of money and one would be technically right, were it not for the fact that everything is more expensive when you’re poor and struggling as she would earn about seven to eight thousand dollars a month (figures are warped for scale and privacy) in order to pay for expenses like rent, groceries and familial support that eats up about three-quarters to nearly all of that.

I bring this up because as we talk about her current living situation, with her residence being burnt down alongside her belongings alongside many people, it was rather irritating to hear comments of assumed comeuppance and “eat the rich” remarks with its encompassing disdain for humans.  

Needless to say, I wanted to get some good news. A fraction of a sign that we as a species still have some sense of comradery within us or something.

Enter The Sea at Midnight and their track, “Wait for Rain.” While the track has been out for a minute now, the track definitely feels more relevant now as its melodies swirl around the listener like smog but in a somewhat cheerful way despite the subject matter, coming off like a new-wave rendition of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” as the band surely was inspired by the track as well.

Climate change is devastatingly real and we are unfortunately watching its effects unfold in real time as “Wait for Rain” dives into drilling this point in because we seem to just not learn at all as the track opts for artistic imagery and a resigned tone with crisp, shimmering guitars. It just kind of… exists, like an artsy sigh of someone who reserves the right to say “I told you so” because they sure aren’t happy they were right and leaves it to the band’s performance to create cathartic music that bounces along with the energy of someone who is trying to walk things along with a happy face through troubling times.

The track is a sparkling ballad of sorts, distilled into four minutes of jangly guitars and a relaxed yet stern voice, one that I personally found to have a very Father John Misty-type of influence to it, which is pretty apt.

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