Kevin Atwater's newest single, "Ferry Beer," does precisely this not through grand theatrics but through quiet, inarguable nostalgia cloistered in melody. With gentle acoustic strums and aching falsettos, Atwater is describing a fleeting moment a sip of something cold, the salt in the air, the ghost of an unfulfilled love.
"Ferry Beer" sounds less like a song than a memory you've lived through, even if the particulars aren't yours. Atwater's narrative is cinematic in its subtlety, building snapshots of "the sea, a perspiring glass, would-be lovers" into a rich scene that could play on the back of your eyelids. And then, here is where the real magic happens: that moment when "Ferry Beer" stops being about Atwater's story and becomes yours.
There's a low-murmur ache to every note of "Ferry Beer," not the kind that wallows, but the type that hangs, like a conversation you wish had gone on longer. When the time comes for Atwater's voice to shoot into a falsetto, you feel the longing, the heaviness of the road not taken, the acceptance, bittersweet, of life's what-ifs.
Kevin Atwater does not give us a song with "Ferry Beer." It provides us with a sense of time and place. And once you're inside, you might not want to leave.