“Where are my friends tonight?”
Isn’t that the question we’ve all been asking of ourselves the past three months, during quarantine? I know I have. And the song it’s taken from couldn’t be more appropriate to the times either.
“Hi, I’m Andy” is the debut single of American duo Litvar, a group made up of Rex Thrustan (vocals, keys, guitar) and Joe Lemieux (drumming). The song, which deals with the many issues of growing up, including depression and substance abuse (as well as maintaining relationships and seeing them mature together with you), is taken off their brand new album, entitled “The Greatest Movie of All Time”.
What is the greatest movie of all time, I hear you ask? Why, your teenage years, of course. What is there that has more feeling than the time you spent agonizing over the simplest things?
Famously, teenagers have a knack for turning the smallest issues into tragedies, but they also deal with a lot of issues that tend to go under-looked in the adult world. Once we’re out of that phase, we quickly forget how harrowing growing up can be. How hard it is to make sense of the world you’re in and to understand the people around you.
BNS GOES TO THE INDIE DISCO: ‘Litvar’ bring us noisy Indie pop ‘Light’ and ‘Variation’ on boppy cool jangly Smiths meets U2 drop “Hi, I’m Andy” – Brand New Sound.com
But thankfully, Litvar remind us of that. With this cheeky, aggressive, rocky video filmed right in one of the guys’ basement (a nod to 90s garage bands, one would assume), the duo reminds us what it means to be a teenager by using their strongest emotion: their passion for music.
A bit raw around the edges, “Hi, I’m Andy” is easily one of the best tracks I’ve listened to this year. Why? Because the emotion is palpable. There isn’t room for doubt, these two guys love what they’re doing. They care deeply about music and are striking out, trying to make it in that hectic, highly competitive world.
And that is such a universal feeling that every young person can relate to, regardless of the field they’re pursuing. With crazy sound and a vaguely lost tone of voice, “Hi, I’m Andy” practically sums up the intense fear of trying to make a career out of something you love, but also captures fragments of our world as a whole, including the recent coronavirus pandemic.
“Hi, I’m Andy” is a song of our times and unlike other songs, which are generally penned by older, more established bands, this one perfectly reflects the youth of today and what I was like growing up in the early 2000s.
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