The Crushed delivers a wake-up call with "Dream" [Review]

Steven McCall's latest track, "Dream," under the moniker The Crushed, hums with re-buttoned upipples of a message far more pressing than its laid-back backdrop would suggest. Far more than just a track, "Dream" is a demonstration surrounded by dreamlike guitar melodies and the sort of thoughtful introspection that allows its meaning to shift shape based on individual interpretations. At its heart, "Dream" is about the human necessity of belonging and how that necessity is warped or ignored, not least among communities of the marginalized, who make up the ranks of the internally occupied, whose labor is used as fuel for the very systems that reliably withhold from them the most elementary forms of inclusion as though the question for this species was somehow never answered, or answered incorrectly.

 McCall doesn't yell the statement so much as let it simmer through crystalline guitar lines, a feathery pace, and a sense of wistfulness that sounds indebted to the late 20th-century alternative and Britpop explosion. You can hear the influence of The Smiths, Radiohead, and The War On Drugs, yet something highly personal makes the song both familiar and necessary. There's a purposeful warmth to "Dream." Guitars chime rather than clash, and while McCall's voice is muted, it carries that raw ache. It's a song that doesn't scream for notice but commands it with repeated listens.

The production is spare but textured, each note in service of the message without overwhelming it. You'll get carried away by the melody and miss the actual statement on society, but that's the allure of The Crushed. Music greets you with a winning smile and slips a mickey into your value system. Steven McCall makes music with The Crushed but also documents thought with it. This is observation in motion. In "Dream," he alchemizes frustration into something meditative and melodic. It's a protest song for those who want a respite from the shouting, a prayer for downtrodden outsiders. If "Dream" indicates where The Crushed is going, we're in for a ride that fuses the soul of the alt-rock of old with the consciousness of today. It's a song that demands to be felt before it can be understood.

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