Now and then, a song comes along that seems less an act of entertainment than a kind of mirror, one that reflects not only an artist’s trip but also the silent, private battles so many people wage. “Lemonade-Charity Release,” the new single from Canberra songwriter Ramblerman, the artistic pseudonym of Stephen Dobson, is such a song.
Penned during a particularly long, dark stretch of life, “Lemonade-Charity Release” started as a burden Dobson wasn’t certain he wanted to carry into the world. Producer Guy Lilleyman at Amberly Studios helped to put a new perspective on it, to make me stop looking away and to see that, sometimes, the only way out is to bring light upon the darkness, to give it shape and voice. The final result is a song that lands somewhere between openness and resilience, one that reflects on challenge but also carries a message of endurance.
“Lemonade-Charity Release” turned on the restless loops formed by the spiral of depression, rumination, self-talk, and the desperate longing for things to be different. But it is about, true to its title, transforming the messy, imperfect alchemy of alchemizing pain into something, into something new, something that can be shared. There is a quiet strength in the repetition, in the way that the song takes notice of despair but never quite gives in to it.
Dobson, on his Ramblerman incarnation, is about more than melody. With a background in architecture, visual art, and design, his songwriting feels both constructed and natural. Every track he writes bears the sensitivity of a storyteller and the curiosity of a maker, an artist who won’t shy away from allowing songs to take their time to gestate. “Lemonade-Charity Release” threads through folk, indie, soul, and pop, but its gravity is lyrical honesty. It’s a song that doesn’t just get played, it bounces.
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