A rainy day with headphones in. Laying in your room in the dark. Staring out your window while sitting in a parking garage. Walking down your street at dusk. A sad end to a movie. Being unable to sleep, even though you are exhausted.
People Floating by Renny Conti (released September 7, 2018) is best understood not by a detailed description of the tone or production of each song, but as a series of moments.
These moments are emphasized by the conversations included in some of the songs. These seemingly random moments in time perfectly encapsulate the feeling of this album. When I listen to this album, I feel like I’m watching a home movie. The mixture of poetic lyrics, recorded conversations, and chill tempo transport the listener into somebody else’s life. The other day, I cleaned out my voicemail inbox. Listening to all of those old messages took me back in time and I realized that it was the same feeling that I had while listening to People Floating. These moments captured by each track on the album are personal and represent something frozen in time.
One of my favorite songs on this album is “Hospital Bed”, which happens to be the second single from the album. I usually don’t gravitate towards singles, but this song is amazing. The themes of love and loss pair with the piano to create a melancholy feeling. It is both sad and beautiful. The ending of this song features a recording of grandparents fawning over a child and parents talking to a child about Disneyland. This compliments the lyrics about growing up and leaves the listener feeling nostalgic about the simplicities of being young.
Another track that stands out on People Floating is “Bleeder”. This song is also slow like “Hospital Bed”, but sounds much more eerie with its acoustic guitar and haunting background noises throughout. The ending of the song features organ-sounding music and fades out in order to transition into the album’s title track, “People Floating”. Since “People Floating is more upbeat than “Bleeder” this creates a good contrast and adds variety to the album.
This album does not rely on loud and heavy instrumentation like most of the music that is featured on Fog To Smog. People Floating showcases mostly the acoustic guitar and the piano. The instrumentation is less complex, which lets the lyrics truly shine. There are too many moving lyrics to quote. Choosing a few stand outs feels disrespectful to the others because they all fit together to form their own story. This is an album that you should listen to all the way through so you can appreciate it fully.
Written by Emma Fong and Brigid Ahern
Instagrams: @emmafong_ and @brigid.ahern