For the last several weeks Frog Eyes have been coyly teasing us, dropping releases from their upcoming album, The Open Up, officially out March 7. Originally forming in 2001, The Open Up will be the groups 9th full studio album to debut. Long awaited and highly anticipated, the group did take an official hiatus when they announced their final album and disbanding in 2018, alongside a last farewell tour. Come early 2022, the band would announce their reunification with a full length album released in April of that same year. The Open Up will be the group’s second full length composition to premier since rejoining two years ago.
Pre-released songs from the album we were gifted with are “Television,” “A Ghost In My Head,” “E-E-Y-O-R-E (That’s Me!),” and my most liked of the three, “I See The Same Things.” The track was released alongside a video directed by Derek Janzen. Lead singer Carey Mercer motions his way through contemporary art forum archives, as they behold a visual capsule. A lens to make comparison of a different time. But what does it all mean? Is beautiful still by definition without being beautified? And have we forgotten the virtue of mirage that can only be perceived by peering through the core foundation of stylistic artwork and forums?
“I See The Same Things” is written so delicately and well rounded, and the lyrics do really enable a light, easy universal interpretation to one’s own muse. Writing this in the sobering depths of the early morning, hard off sleep, Carey’s lyrics remind me, as if in the facade of a lullaby, that love is a mansion, a pension, a pantry, but not a pill. A healthy mantra and daily chant I could most personally use myself. The lasting remainder of the song wraps me up and cocoons me. It fully entrances and reminds me that I can gravitate from feeling to feeling, perspective to perspective,[ from loss to win,] and still be left standing whole at the end of it all, viewing it through the same lens regardless of how distant it may feel. Sickeningly yet at times still reassuringly, I see the same things… and the ending of the song really presents the perfect interpretation of that amongst the heavy complicity of it all.
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