“The Arrow at Your Feet,” a song off of Michael Flynn’s forthcoming debut solo album Face in the Cloud (out July 15 on Hearts & Plugs), comes across at first like a breakup song: “Just use the only words you know / To mumble through this perfect moment / Just rest your head against my throat / Breathing in / Even with / The arrow at your feet / Pointing you away from me.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking that’s what it’s about. After all, Flynn is best known as one-half of the pop-rock duo Slow Runner, which has recorded its fair share of songs about romantic relationships and heartbreak.
But while the lyrics certainly work as a breakup song, that was not Flynn’s intent. Care to guess what he’s really driving at? To find out, read our interview with Flynn in next week’s City Paper.
Like many songs on the album, “The Arrow at Your Feet” sounds like an outtake from a John Hughes movie soundtrack, circa 1985, with slowly building layers of synthesizer drones and chimes building toward an emotional climax. Another song, the spooky “Holy Ghost,” debuted recently on the music blog The Wild Honey Pie:
Other sonic touches on the album are plain fun, like the vocoder singing on “A Love That Bends” and “That Danny Glover Feeling.” The song “Winsome Lonesome,” despite its melancholy lyrics, features a shake-your-fist-in-the-air opening riff and a repeating synth rhythm that calls to mind the Chariots of Fire theme. Appropriately, in a promotional YouTube video, Flynn paired part of the song with the climactic scene in Teen Wolf where Michael J. Fox’s character sinks the game-winning free throw:
Click here to pre-order Face in the Cloud.
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