Since putting out debut album Go to Sleep, Mess in 2013, Michael Serrin of Florida’s Day Joy has had a tough time, losing both his younger brother and life partner. With years of grieving behind him, Serrin has written and recorded an album detailing the period, using an understandably melancholy twist on their usual dream pop sound.
With help from Someday River’s Greyson Charnock on production, lead single ‘Florida’s Warm’ picks up this mantle and marches forwards. With morose vocals teetering on despondency, the song tells of far-away dreaming of Floridian warmth when stuck in a New York winter, the isolated bone-chill providing a neat allegory for the themes of grief and loss. With more than a hint of fatalism, the song isn’t hopeful so much as hopeful of hope, the narrator holding on to the image of a brighter day, homesick and half-tortured by the slim possibility of the chance the sun might rise once more, bringing a thaw that might allow some sensation to return to frost-bitten limbs.
“So I just close my eyes, pretend I’m home,
Florida’s warm tonight, it’s all I know
Sorry for how I went and cut you out
Sorry for how I am holding outWhen I close my eyes, I see you there
Florida’s warm tonight, it’s what I want
Sorry for how I went and fucked you up
Sorry for how I am not enough”
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The album has no official release date or title as of yet, though Day Joy promises to “leak” it out “single by single” over the next few months, so be sure to keep an eye on Soundcloud/Bandcamp for that.
Photograph by Travis Reed