In the Modern World

A slow burn built on repetition and restraint, this track moves like traffic seen through rain-streaked glass — unhurried, grey, hypnotic. The guitars lock into a motorik pulse that never quite resolves, cycling through the same phrases with the patience of someone who has accepted they are going nowhere fast. Grian Chatten's voice arrives flat and unadorned, a Dublin baritone drained of performance, as if reading a list of grievances into a payphone. There is no crescendo to reward the listener. The production keeps everything at the same low temperature — bass forward, drums dry, guitars blurred at the edges — which makes the whole thing feel like walking through a city that used to mean something to you but no longer does. The song is about the erosion of meaning in contemporary life, about living inside systems that were designed before you arrived and will outlast you without noticing. It is not angry about this. That's what makes it unsettling. You reach for it late on a weeknight when the fluorescent light in your kitchen flickers and you think, for a brief moment, about how strange it is to be here at all.