This review was paid for by Black Astronaut Records. If you too want me to review your music, or any other release of your choosing, please place a commission here.
Final verdict: 8/10 ★★★★☆
On this gloomy, gloomy Tuesday morning, I humbly bring to you Black Astronaut Records’ 2023 single “China Shop” – a ballad swingin’ with themes of alienation and subsequent annihilation. Like a bull in a China shop, our narrator witnesses all sorts of mundane events, and life gains traction around him while he is forced (in one way or another) to remain stationary. He is overwhelmed, and he is like a bull in a China shop… a bull in a China shop who came to realize that Santa is not real and that Jesus was a Jew (both of which are factual statements, for what it’s worth) after a lifetime of being told otherwise. This introduces a layer of deception and subsequent rebellion to the piece – another thematic couplet, right there.
There is a sense of displacement and perhaps even detachment permeating the meat here, making what would otherwise be just an alright ballad into something worth a listen or five. It really does make me feel like a bull in a China shop, too. As I sit here listening to this song… it keeps flowing and I cannot help but cease and keep a keen ear out – I mean, what else could I do? The accompaniment here has a sweet piano timbre to boast, as well as some slide guitar action, while the vocals are implicatively (if not overtly) reminiscent of those found in country-rock tunes. It is all most mellow yet effective in what it sets out to do. The melancholy of the lyrics combines at once with the somber instrumentation like two adjacent pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and it all makes for a nice, short-and-sweet emotional contemplation. Like a bull in a China shop, I cannot help but be overtaken by the current. And all the while, the rivers whisper sweet nothings into my ears, that I would rather interpret to be a fondness for this tune. 8/10.
LISTEN:
https://on.soundcloud.com/ONWJHs6X3IMEqhf9AE
NOTES AND REFERENCES:
- siliamusic.com does not condone the use of Artificial Intelligence for artistic purposes of any sort. This artwork was AI-generated by the coordinator of the project that is being covered. ↩︎
Silia 
Leave a comment