Margate, England-based “hyper-country” musician Jack Goldstein combines personal history and thematically broad existential weight into “Falling Off The Earth,” a poignant alt-country stunner weaving America’s 1980s farming crisis with themes of erasure, impermanence, and the quiet devastation of a changing world slipping beyond one’s grasp.
A spaciously inviting soundscape emerges steadily, with twangy guitars and dreamy piano intertwining into Goldstein’s solemn vocal introspection. “A lot of other farmers lost their land,” he lets out, his memorable vocals combining with glimpses of brass. That element’s incorporation is representative of thematic hold, here as well. “I sampled my late parents’ brass band for this track, so I kinda feel like I’m dueting with them in a weird way,” Goldstein says. “The sample comes from an old cassette tape from the late eighties, around the same time as the farming crisis, that someone recorded of the brass band my parents played in.”
The track stirs in its lyrical perspectives of changing times and the subsequent impact on certain, longstanding occupations — here drawing upon America’s farming crisis in the ’80s specifically, though also channeling a broader power regarding erasure, in general. Bolstering rhythms and added guitars pair with Goldstein’s escalated vocal emotion, through descriptions such as “There’s bovine beefalo, and they’re bloody at the mouth / And the surplus grain? We can drink it to our health.” Continued accounts of poultry losing their feathers and an over-wet crop lead impactfully to the “but we’re falling off the earth” ardor.
A beckoning to “don’t forget the day, the day we fell off the earth” then rouses into an impassioned blast of vocal emotion, combining with clanging piano and resonating guitars for a sound that resembles an alt-country version of The Walkmen. The production’s second half in its “there ain’t no telling where the world is gonna go” contemplation and gradual expanse into enthused vocal howls and spacey electro-folk additives. Impactful in its personal, poignant lyricism and alt-country vigor, “falling off the earth” is a standout success from Jack Goldstein.
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We discovered this release via MusoSoup.
