Drugdealer is the latest (drug related) stage name of Los Angeles artist Michael Collins (who previously released music under the name of Run DMT and Salvia Plath). Earlier this year, he released his debut album The End of Comedy (2016), which was billed as "a whimsical world informed by Jean Baudrillard, social media perception, Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western vistas and Collins’s endless travels [...] a collection of vignettes – lucid, lysergic and organic – featuring homespun explorations of Carole King-esque piano ballads, Bacharach-ian orchestration, the psych-folk of Ultimate Spinach and Hendrickson Road House and even New York City subway jazz, all pulled together by Collins’s deft AOR auteurship and keen sense of humour" (Weird World Records).
"Suddenly", the first track from the album, certainly amounts to a refreshing Carole King-esque piano ballad with the help of Natalie Mering's (Weyes Blood) dreamy and soulful vocals. Collins keeps the formula simple, relying on a ’70s singer-songwriter piano segment (e.g. Harry Nilsson and Laurel Canyon), a fleeting sax riff and evocative lyrics to work his magic:
'Suddenly my mind is open,
and I know you won't the be sad in the day
Tempted by the morning sun
And I now I feel, like I'm home again
Ahh, I'm home again
Ahh, I'm home again
Suddenly my eyes are open, and I see you won't be
there for me
Tempted by the midnight hour
and now I feel, like I'm alone again
Ahh, I'm home again
(ahhh)
(I'm home)'
Lyrics: Musixmatch
Like the lyrics, Collins' instrumentation effortlessly alternates between a downcast, sombre interludes (when the mournful revelation is made) and a buoyant, carefree sax-driven segment (when Mering revels in finding herself home again). While seemingly simple, the song features a wide range of emotions: surprise, joy, bliss, sadness, loneliness, nostalgia. The song's melody and Mering's evocative vocals take you out from the shadows and into the sun, and then back again.
