The Eau Claire, Wisconsin band Adelyn Rose works people into its songs who feel like they are whispers. They feel like they're thinking themselves gone, as if they were able to take a poke at their other forearm or try to muss up someone else's hair and there would be nothing there. It would all just be a milky illusion. There are ways to still come into contact with these people, but they are usually elsewhere, taking in what they need and dreaming the rest of it out, like carbon dioxide.
They are people who sometimes feel as if they're made of kindling as well. They're waiting for someone to set them afire, burning them all the way down to the ash they know they're made of. There's a resilience to them that still can never mask their tenderness. They'll keep pressing and pressing until they fall, as lead singer Addie Strei sings on the song, "Press," but they're being run by some inner strengths that are so gentle and a wee bit timid and uncertain that there's no telling how they're going to hold up. But the days roll on.
The shades go up and down, doors and windows open and close, the mail comes, the bills go out, laces are tripped over, cuts heal, heads simmer, lips are locked, holes are dug, holes are filled, things die and some come back to life and it all just keeps going. These people stay upright, mostly. They're persevering as well as they can, rarely looking too weak, believing that they can still affect most things in their lives.
Strei sings, "From our very own fingertips comes everything…/Easily, we're already there/Comfortable, like a dream." We can feel like we're elsewhere, but we're not kidding anyone, even if we do make ourselves unavailable. There's a sense here, in these songs about seeking and finding better ways to get by, that these characters are stepping outside of themselves and feeling the shivers as much as they can, cutting things to the bone to look more closely at them. They step out there and, "Once again, walk the frozen streets, drive for miles in the dark/Could it be all that we desire, here in our hands/We would never get tired/If we could start ourselves a fire/Here in our hands/We would never get tired."