Apollo Wild releases new single "Hotel Bar'
It’s hard to say when or where exactly I met Apollo Wild during my Nashville1.0 life, but it had to be around 2015 or ’16, when I was in Moseley. Somewhere, perhaps by trading illusions of tenacity for American Spirits on the porch at The Basement East (or maybe Tin Dog Tavern,) I began to run in (or near, really) the same circles as the Nashville 10’s, the overlap in the Venn diagram of models and musicians which at a glance look to be a lot more ‘Los Angeles,’ and I was introduced to Reece Presson and Phil Campbell. This was, of course, before my own grief-driven, sudden submersion into emotional maturity, and I was off to LA myself before any of these people could know me as that. Being that I returned to Tennessee during a pandemic (and considering how small the city is, socially) it took a few months before running into a mutual friend who reminded me casually of the AW boys. -It has been fascinating for me to rediscover local bands in their current, most recent incarnations; some bands have new members or musical themes because of marriages, divorces. Some bands don’t exist at all anymore; I know I have only been solo myself almost two years. Some writers are rusty, spending less time on their craft to tend to families and jobs, while others are aging more smooth and refined; I hope to be included with the latter, well-oiled from hard knocks and self discipline. As new Nashville bands (and band names!) challenge my sense of familiar, Apollo Wild is still together as ever, a band of brother-like, boys-now-men who have remained shoulder-by-shoulder through some real shit. Of their newest single, Hotel Bar, frontman Reece Presson explains in an instagram post “I wrote it shortly after my father passed. It’s about my trip home for the funeral and the experiences, feelings, and interactions of that week.”
The song begins with a soft-yet-energetic electric guitar lead, as if you jumped to the busiest moment of Boy and Bear song and pressed play, and repeats until almost (but not quite) dizzying, amping up and filling the space until the vocal drops in, unique and endearing in its inflections. Repetition is both musically and lyrically a theme in the song which reflects the disorienting nature of recent grief; just when you build enough momentum to function and get through the day, it ends and you awake to face the mountain again. “I can’t keep climbing, oh just let me fall,” pleads Presson. The lyrical verses pause often for musical breaks, allowing the members of Apollo Wild to support their friend in processing this great sadness. In one verse, Reece’s words recollect walking into his father’s closet, looking for a non-specific ’something,’ a token, which without saying calls to question the power of self-inflicted sentiment which I, too have been considering through my own losses. “Don’t know nobody,” he says of walking around his childhood home; does he or does he not feel the presence of his inner child in this moment, I wonder? In an arrangement technique more typical of the 90’s and early 2000s, the song stops altogether for a brief moment of silence; what a thoughtful and powerful aid in conveying the humbling shock of existential crisis presented in this song. As I have before discussed here, my own depths of grief filled my mind with heavy fog while somehow emptying it altogether; I could imagine that I would, too in this state of mind leave my drink at the hotel bar.
Sending all my love and condolences to Reece Presson + family during this difficult time; my part in our artist community supports you and your healing. Thank you for sharing this song with me. *You’ve got beautiful feelings*
Listen to ‘Hotel Bar’ below! XX, Merci!
-Suzie
https://youtu.be/Ectt9ozshjw
