By Charley Ruddell
In times dominated by technological oppression, it’s often easy to forget how even the most mundane aspects of robotic automation can feel intrusive.
“What’s your login and passcode / If you are who you say you are,” sings Ian Davis on “Who You Say You Are,” the first single from Ian Davis: Rock Band’s debut album Passing Phase. He follows: “And what’s your own mother’s maiden name / If you are who you say you are.” On paper, these questions feel innocuous when asked by a bot on an online checkout page, but there’s a sort of soft touch paranoia within them that reveals itself when quivered from a fragile human voice.
This realization is where Davis chooses to sound an alarm, or in the case of the lush breeze of “Who You Say You Are,” offer a gentle wake up call. The counterpoint of cascading synthesizers and warbly guitar lines act as Davis’ anxious alertness to Big Brother's watchful eye, but the sweet saunter of the rhythm section feels like a nice walk in the park. It’s a juxtaposition that modestly represents the burden of invasive technology we feel in our pockets all day long.
Moments like these bring to mind the great power of Deerhunter or Dirty Projectors—sharp, ambitious arranging with an air of troubled indifference, both delicate and unwavering in spirit.
In the Sean Pecknold-esque accompanying video by Renata Zeiguer, a string of planet-like orbs guide the loose narrative through a psychedelic, stop motion collage of vintage landscape photographs and arbitrary objects. As the world passes by in a sequence of morphing vignettes, we look through the lenses of abstraction and absurdity that play into the song’s overarching voyeuristic theme. It’s a statement that reads like a manifesto; while technology may observe us in a data-driven, fact-of-life kind of way, we are able to do something that a machine can never do: fantasize.
Catch Ian Davis: Rock Band at their release show on January 17 at Littlefield