Review semioticrobotic
Memphis
Trademarks & Copyrights trademarksandcopyrights.bandcamp.com/album/memphis
"Tell me that you'll always stay," begs a narrator in the opening track of this bittersweet tapestry. That pleading tone is incessant in Memphis, a poignant, six-track elegy to the end of summer from classic-style mainstay Trademarks & Copyrights. Fall means change, and for Memphis' besotted balladeers, two lovers blindsided by the onset of greyer days, that means encroaching ambiguity, doubt, and fear. Those days are growing shorter, their nights bitter, and the flings and dalliances so simple and effortless in sunnier times are suddenly much more complicated — and uncertain — than they seemed when the convertible's top was down. Memphis is a fretful album. Its lyrics are full of questions that were never really necessary by the poolside, never really salient through the saline: "Will you still be here tomorrow?" "Why can't we just get along?" Once again, Trademarks & Copyrights demonstrates
It's a pensive release from Trademarks & Copyrights,
mastery in conjuring bearskin rugs and touches of
so don't expect to be bopping under your headphones.
bubbly, as synth-heavy choruses, sultry bass licks, and
Stare into the early-season fireplace instead, squint to
soulful vocals depict a couple desperate to work it out.
give the scene that softened frame, and try to imagine a
We can only listen to the montage as the cracks in their
path forward for these hopeless, hapless, helpless lovers.
relationship begin to form. "We're gonna make it if we
For maximum effect, play the artist's preceding release,
try," assures one as he slowly wraps his arm around two
Summer Love, just before popping Memphis into the deck.
hunched, sweatered shoulders. "We're gonna make it,
You'll cascade into the same liminal space that has these
you and I." The cork pops, but all that flows is anxiety.
two so disquieted — that perfect passage from clear to
"Why can't we just get along?" another wonders as the
cloudy. If summer's heat is what ignites fiery passions,
white Lamborghini cruises down the boulevard in late-
then fall's crisp pallor is their first true test. With Memphis,
afternoon dusk, going nowhere, whisking up yellow and
Trademarks & Copyrights depicts it all beautifully.
orange eddies that swirl onto the curb.
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