“Drawing loosely on the titular figure,” we wrote of Daneshevskaya‘s single ‘Scrooge’ back in November, “the track brings to life a sense of growing alienation within a relationship, as though the significant other is slowing deforming into a stranger in real time.” The track was a follow-up to 2023’s Long Is The Tunnel—a record we praised for “its warm, careful tone, where the past, present and future are treated not as distinct things but rather parts of an encompassing whole”—and now Daneshevskaya is back with a brand new single ‘Kermit & Gyro’ to further build on the idea that both memories and desires are able to change the present.
“What was I worth to you? / Of course I forget / How to move in the sun,” go the first lines of the single. “Like a tree frog I’ve begun / To change color / I’m a different kind of reptile now / Like a bug looking for cover / Do I whip my arms around swim harder?” This sense of questioning runs through ‘Kermit & Gyro’, the song sitting in the liminal space between love and loss, its cinematic swells representing romantic fondness or wistful regret. Neither such emotion wins out in the end, which appears to be the entire point of the track. The idea that to live is to love and grieve in the same instant. To always hold the competing feelings of longing to set out in a new direction and return to the past again.
Photo by Madeline Leshner