A familiar feeling: you hear or read a succinct line – like “Love is not an escape from a fire, but the choice to stay in it together” – and it gets stuck in your head for a long time. Shawn Brown from Portland took this thought and literally made it sound, transforming the aphorism into a dense, electrically charged rock track. In the single “What a Way to Go”, released on Bootney Lee Records, this is Brown’s view of a world ready to fall apart at any moment. Without slipping into a tedious elegy, the singer delivers a focused, resilient, and incredibly driving rock.
The rhythm tears off from the very start without a warm-up. There are all the necessary “ingredients” for a night drive: long highways, streetlights blurring on the glass, and an anxious feeling as if tomorrow might not come. Therefore, one has to live to the fullest. Producer Grecco Buratto builds the song like a wave: a tight rhythm section, wide guitars, and a chorus that begs for an open window. And at the same time, the track doesn’t sprawl into loudness for the sake of loudness; on the contrary, the song sounds like a confession spoken at the limit of breath. A musical story where two people, while everything around loses its footing, continue to hold onto each other. It is about relationships that pass through anxiety, uncertainty, and adult life, in which it is rarely calm. The contrast itself works particularly well. Brown sings about fragility, but the arrangement answers him with strength. The music stubbornly reaches for catharsis. You want to experience the song – along with its hum, pauses, and the tremor inside.
Together with his musicians – Ben Landsverk, Jeff Langston, and Ned Failing – Shawn recorded a song for those who keep moving forward, even when everything goes wrong. And if this really is a “beautiful departure” – what a way to go – then let it sound like this single: loud, honest, and with a stubborn belief that together it is still easier to survive any catastrophe.
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