Harlow, Essex quintet Morning Parade gave an exclusive and intimate look at an acoustic session for their song "Alienation", the title track from their recent EP from SO Recordings. A band of old schoolmates, frontman Steve Sparrow, with Phil Titus, Andrew Hayes, Ben Giddings and Chad Thomas are putting the finishing touches on their upcoming second album recorded in the summer of 2013 in Atlanta, Georgia by Ben Allen at Maze Studios.
On this acoustic version, the concept of "Alienation" lurks everywhere in Sparrow's song about a world throwing "caution to the wind" and discarded, "bank notes in the bin." The resonance from the acoustic piano and guitars brings the entire existential crisis a little bit closer to both the listener and the group, from the chorus thesis of, "and everything you are, everything you were, everything you’ve been’s not everything you’ll be", to the inevitable and ineffable crash of, "we’re really all the stars that burst in the universe of our alienation." The unplugged rendering brings out the band's prophetic, "passenger, a messenger" message of winter cabin comforts mixed with the calamity of a disconnected kind of anxiety. "It’s like a mobile phone that can’t phone home. It’s an endless ringing, and it’s a silent drone." "Alienation" is a song that may sound best in the far corners of the world outside the reach of cell and data transmission towers.
