New York’s Dash Hammerstein borrows a page out of the David Byrne textbook on the latest 808-driven single “Let it Grow”, serving up a seemingly light-hearted head bobber full of tongue-in-cheek lyrics to shed light on big ideas in a sneakily tricky pop package. While the lyrics address a society whose opposing sides grow increasingly inflexible by the day, Hammerstein’s eclectic arrangement that pulls influences from Devo, the Kinks, and a little surf rock just to name a few, provide proof that pulling from an array of different ideas isn’t something we should continue to shy away from. “Let it Grow” is off the recent Time Travel/Hot Pretzel EP out July 1.
“Lyrically, it’s the closest I’ve come to writing an environmentalist anthem – I was reading Richard Powers’ ‘The Overstory’ at the time. The refrain of ‘let it grow’ does double duty, referring (sincerely) to nature itself and (glibly) to our seeming indifference to the cost of our actions. We as humans are good at a lot of things but our tendency to categorize and politicize can make it easy to miss the larger picture. When challenged, people dig their heels into what would otherwise be arbitrary positions and become less adaptable over time (hence the line “spent all your money living under the gun / and now the gun has become blue sky / look again”).
