The “One-track Find” feature is an expedition of sorts to unearth lost musical treasure which falls through the cracks of the beaten path and gets trampled underneath by the callous footsteps of profit-driven music merchants and a gullible and easily satisfied music consuming public. One-track Find delivers these buried and overlooked treasures for the true music makers and true music listeners one song at a time. It advances the radical idea that it’s the prophets in music not the profits that can change the world, even if it’s only the small corner of the world in which you live. It couldn’t be simpler. All that’s required of you, is to listen with your ears, your heart, your soul, and your imagination, and let the music return you to a familiar place or confidently lead you away, to somewhere you’ve never been before.
Forget everything mainstream radio has conditioned you to believe about what defines a good song. That’s all a lie anyway, unless you’re content with songs high on studio augmented electronic fluff, inflated by unwarranted cockiness and deficient in substance and truth. You have to step outside of the commercial radio bubble for music that involves legitimate emotion, relatable life experiences, and real world worries, losses, and victories. This is where the majority of people actually reside, whether they accept it or not. It’s a place where every day people work real jobs, begin and end real relationships, and pay real debts, financial and emotional. It’s a world inhabited by real people who haven’t conned the public, or worse, themselves into believing that living and worshiping the empty existence of excess and pop idol stardom is the only path to artistic expression, happiness, and success.
Fortunately, for those whose lot in life is not a lot, but genuine, and at times overwhelming, there are bands like A Sundae Drive from Houston, Texas, whose members are content living and writing songs in and about this real world which they share with you. This is the local indie rock band’s second time to be highlighted as a One-track Find feature, and it certainly won’t be its last. Any of the tracks from their most recent album “The Senseless & the Sound” could easily qualify. However, the final track of the album, “Reconjugated” is one of those songs which goes beyond just being a great tune. It’s a song that shakes you awake from that stream of consciousness trance you so often slip into, as you trudge through your daily routine, precariously juggling life’s responsibilities, while going through the motions of surviving yet another day. “Reconjugated” is a gentle, haunting ballad that conjures up the experience of struggling with loss and accepting it in any of its forms. It could be the loss of a life or an important part of your life, such as youth and innocence. It could be the end of a relationship, which at one time may have been the center of your universe, but has since been reduced to a vague memory, a speck on the horizon, or even worse, a mirage, which forces you to question whether it ever existed as you knew it in the first place.
Jennifer Gray-Garcia doesn’t always step out front and sing lead for A Sundae Drive, but when she does, it’s worth the wait. On “Reconjugated,” as well as “Laissez Tomber” from the same album, it’s the equivalent of releasing the cork from the metaphorical bottle and allowing her to let loose with a surge of suppressed emotions, which have been churning silently for some time. It’s to the benefit of music fans and participants in the game known as life, to bear witness at times like this when her emotions can no longer be contained. Jennifer Gray-Garcia’s impassioned delivery of the lyrics of “Reconjugated” are at once, restlessly tormented and tenderly moving. They ring true because they are words she herself has put to paper in reaction to the world as she sees it and interacts with it. She’s the Jenn Master when it comes to writing songs that tap into the collective psyche of everyday people and their complex relationships with life. She’s just better than others at tuning in to her surroundings and observing life and then repainting it for those who can’t or won’t take notice of the world.
With a simultaneously somber and reassuring, non-intrusive piano backdrop, her voice wavers beautifully with a mixture of anguish and hope as “Reconjugated” confronts the reality of coming to terms with the inevitable truth, that nothing in life is forever. However, whether you wish for it or not, the people, events, and occurrences which touch you most, will linger residually until the end. They'll nip at your heels or dangle just out of reach, and you will find yourself rejoined or reconjugated with these lost moments in time. In the hands of a less astute band, “Reconjugated” could have stumbled aimlessly into a maudlin pity fest. However, for A Sundae Drive, the world is not black and white. It’s a world where confidence and caution put on the same shoes. They just show different signs of wear. “Reconjugated” is both a troubling and comforting reminder that the moments that slip away can still, for better or for worse, be relived and revisited in your memories and your dreams after they are gone. At the same time, “Reconjugated” cautions you to embrace these moments fully when they’re still within reach and they can reciprocate in kind, because like everything else, your dreams and your memories will also one day disappear.
Despite its solemn theme, “Reconjugated” is less of a mournful dirge and more of a soothing lullaby for those who face loss in any of its incarnations. It’s representative of A Sundae Drive’s seemingly innate talent and desire for capturing the sometimes joyful, sometimes dark, universal slices of life in vivid, yet unobtrusive imagery familiar and reassuring as home to anyone who is trying to make sense of the world. Life can be a rough journey, but no matter what, as long as A Sundae Drive is by your side (on your home turntable, computer, car CD player, personal MP3 player or playing live around town) and they continue to write songs which speak to you honestly and depict your world truthfully, then you’ve got to tell yourself everything is going to be okay.
Click here to listen to “Reconjugated.” Click here to listen to more music from A Sundae Drive. This article should in no way be construed as diminishing the overwhelming talent and contributions of the rest of the band. A Sundae Drive is Zeek Garcia (guitar, vocals), Sergio Cano (guitar, vocals), Jennifer Gray-Garcia (bass, keys, vocals), and Mike Medina (drums). The band is a currently working on a new album scheduled for release in 2016.