Synth Single Review: “Find A Way Back Home” by Megan McDuffee & ALEX
by Karl Magi
Megan McDuffee & ALEX’s “Find A Way Back Home” bursts with forcefully hammering underpinnings as Megan McDuffee's voice drifts like a spectre through lonely halls, her voice trailing like a diaphanous shroud. A rushing underlayer balances floating vocals that conjure emptiness and abandonment while the sweeping synthesizer lines subtly support the painful message in the lyrics.
The rhythm is insistent as the soundscape adds hurting depth and supports Megan McDuffee's voice as it grasps me with feelings of loss and desperate wanting. The track is touched by a guitar that shivers like a ghost in the vaulted chambers of an ancient castle while the low end throbs. Broken emotions and tragic sensations permeate the background as it slips with tendrils of misty light. The beat is a metronomic pulse has the vocals hover like an ethereal spirit before the song comes to an end with haunting softness.
Saying she'd "give up all the pieces inside my soul for you" and erase the song subject’s ending while turning back the days, our storyteller inhales and exhales with an understanding that she has to continue on. She promises to "whisper your name" as she finds herself "sunken into grey, just an echo in the glass" and she misses the other person terribly.
With the ability to feel the song’s subject everywhere, the narrator wonders if she'll ever find her way back home. "Wandering in my thoughts, twisting shapes all climb the walls, throwing shadows amidst the light." It's impossible for her to explain her pain at the realization that the other person is gone. She asks, "So how do I sense your touch on my skin each night?"
Once more, our storyteller finds herself engulfed by grey, "following my halted step" as she keenly feels the other person's loss. She can sense the other person everywhere "haunting every page and stone." She wants the song’s subject to "let me find a way back home." Although she desires the other person endlessly, it's impossible and she adds, "I don't want to need to let you go. "
On misty mornings, the narrator visits the place where the other person ought to be in order to "hold the roughness of your loam" and concludes that she feels in "equal measures the fear and the comfort of your ghost and knowing I'm never alone."
