A while ago, while writing about another artist and song we discovered a new ‘Word of the Day’ – Prosody.
If you haven’t encountered it before, prosody means the general harmony between the music and the lyrics. Good prosody means the rhythm, chord progression, and melodic accents naturally support the overall emotion and message of the song.
In plain language the music suggests what the song is about.
And so with ‘Running from Fury’, perhaps the best example I have heard to date. It’s non-stop, breathless and exuberant throughout its three minutes and forty seconds backed by a murderously incessant drum beat and bass line. It’s the theme to Stephen King and Arnie’s ‘The Running Man’ that never was.
Or perhaps what the boxer Tyson Fury might play before his championship bout.
There are choruses and verses but it’s so frantic that they merge into one like the compressing of a conventional explosive into Uranium 235 to set off a nuclear explosion.
Telephone Romeo (Aleksi Skippari) explains that ‘Running from Fury’ is a deeply personal song that confronts aspects of his life that have been bubbling under the surface waiting to be recognised and that he would probably never had written it had he not been laid up for a month by a back injury.
I found it hard to nail the specific message and the best I can offer is that he’s in the middle of a crisis which sees him wanting and needing to slow down and maybe find some real ‘meaning’ in his life but at the same time he acknowledges that he’s getting older and has to continue with the pedal to the metal or life will leave it him trailing in its wake.
The fact he wrote it while immobile adds to the evidence for that. We are at our most vulnerable when we are immobile.
But of course I could be completely wrong. And that doesn’t explain the title.
Of one thing I am certain. If your music preference is for the breathless you’ll find it hard to keep up with this one.
One little criticism. Without printed lyrics I would really have been struggling. His diction isn’t the clearest here and the vocal is perhaps a notch or two lower than it might have been.
But don’t let that spoil it. Perhaps my ears just need a service.
Telephone Romeo’s debut album arrives on 5th June. Both it and the single are on Soliti Recordings.
(Continues after the Spotify link).
The musicians:
Aleksi Skippari – vocals, guitars, bass
Samuli Kesti – Drums
Find him on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/telephoneromeo/
