Evan Scott Olson's new single, "Cages," is a gut-punching anthem that you can't look away from, one of the most urgent crises of our time. Where many songs rely on metaphor, Olson opts for a profoundly human storytelling approach.
The song begins with a line that should inspire any great person to be their best, and the only crime is that he's trying to feed his family. Olson strikes a tone not of political sloganeering but of empathy. The song's strength, memorably expressed in the chorus with which it's punctuated, is its demand that faces, names, and lives be inserted into a conversation all too often limped back to sloganeering. The song emulates its message with a sense of urgency. The arrangement is spare but resonant, with plenty of room for the words to do their cutting and carry rhythms that suggest an indomitable spirit. Underpinning the track, less a performance than a testimony, is Olson's aching yet resolute vocal delivery.
As "Cages" gallops along, Olson broadens the frame. He follows the path from the tense heat of borderlands to suburban cul-de-sacs, demonstrating how systemic injustice travels far outside detention centers. Every lyric is like a snapshot, carefully framed but universal in weight. It feels both intimate and panoramic, leaving listeners not with a story exactly, but with an exhortation to bear witness.
"Cages" is an act of witness, a prompt to remember that behind statistics are families, futures, and lives in transit. In a cultural climate that's increasingly drowned out by noise, Olson has created something rare here. Music that not only begs to be heard, but also felt.