David Kushner peels back the layers of his inner demons in his new single "Humankind," a powerful insight and reflection. In his signature evocative storytelling and hauntingly resonant vocals, Kushner plunges into the wounds left behind by religious trauma, a looking glass into humanity's rifts, where our desires for virtue unravel into hypocrisy, materialism, and self-interest.
"Humankind" opens with the kind of plaintive piano notes that will haunt you for days. Those haunted notes immediately draw you in, metaphorically forcing you to sit down so you can hear a super raw, unfiltered confession. Kushner's deep, textured voice reverberates over this stark instrumentation, creating an image of innocence lost, of faith misplaced in institutions that should but cannot live up to their ideals.
As "Humankind" swells and builds with atmospheric intensity, he laments a disillusionment. "I'm the one that you came and slaughtered. You spin me around. I was lookin' for livin' water. You just let me drown." Drenched in anguish and desire, they cut the song like a revelation, sounding the universal quest for relief in an oft-insufficient universe.
The chorus packs an emotional wallop as Kushner grapples with the gravity of his experiences in the devastating refrain: "Humankind just lets me down." It's a painful acknowledgment of the shortcomings of people, systems, and beliefs previously held sacred. However, underneath the grief lies a muted resilience and an unwillingness to believe that absolute goodness can no longer be located amid all the turmoil.
David Kushner cements his position as no virtual warrior in "Humankind. " He is a gutsy storyteller not afraid to explore the inter-terrains of emotion. This is a reckoning, a catharsis, and a provocation to interrogate what we consider trustworthy.