A gentle revelation comes in the form of "Calm Backwaters," the latest from Swedish indie rock band Great Hare. This song feels like a deep breath after the frenzy of self-importance. When it enters, clocking in with laid-back confidence, the track wafts in like early morning light through half-closed blinds, the clarity you can only find in hushed calm.
Great Hare is a band from Sweden. They are four best friends who have been together on and off for the best part of years. Years later, having reunited, they named the band after those scenarios of unlikely nocturnal run-ins with wild hares, a perfect metaphor for those elusive instances they capture in their music. Working with tape delay machines and pink chorus pedals, they have crafted a sound that tips its hat to the post-punk past of their youths and still continues to push both them and the territory of the music forward while retaining their sense of introspection.
"Calm Backwaters" is, at its essence, a humble song that imagines songs as databases with which you interact associatively. It is the musical equivalent of waking up and realizing you are not the sun in everyone's solar system and being okay with that, not panicking. There's something beautiful about that. Instead of pursuing some grand narrative, the track finds power in the everyday, the hushed, and even the silent.
From the opening notes, the arrangement is elegantly restrained. Guitars sparkle with that particular brand of Scandinavian cool, and they never overwhelm, as they're always there. The drums do not hurry but stroll. Nestled within it is a warm, world-weary vocal that doesn't pretend to have all the answers but does know a few truths worth telling again. An honesty about "Calm Backwaters" is that it turns into a performance and a conversation. Great Hare stands as one antidote to the contemporary obsession with urgency and relevance, and this work prioritizes slowness and subtlety, with self-awareness being its only necessary element.
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