The new record comes out on 3 November. Until then I will write about one track here every day — ten posts, ten tracks, the last one on release day.
“Chasing perfect shadows” opens “Bound by Their Strength” and straight away asks the question the record will spend its whole length answering: what happens to someone who lives to other people’s expectations.
Running Through Mirrors
The first line: “I’m running through mirrors, reflecting their needs.”
A mirror is supposed to show a face. This one shows what other people want. The second verse says it outright: “The mirror’s a lie, showing faces not mine.”
It is a very precise description of something anyone knows who has spent a long time trying to be all right for everybody at once. After a while you no longer know which of those faces is your own.
Chains Made of Smiles
The first verse holds a line that is easy to miss: “Their smiles are my chains.”
Not a shout, not a punishment, not a threat. A smile. The nicest thing anyone can give you — and it is the thing that holds hardest, because to keep it you have to keep playing along.
In the third verse the image comes back in another shape: “Their praise is a chain that I can’t seem to break.” And next to it: “The mask that I wear is a ghost of my face.”
The First Reading of the Title
The first verse also contains the word the record is named after: “in this cycle I’m bound.”
“Bound by Their Strength” reads two ways: tied down by their strength, or held up by it. Here only the first meaning is at work. “Their,” “they” and “them” come up more than twenty times in this lyric, and every time it is someone who has to be lived up to.
The second meaning only arrives in the second half of the record. For now, “they” are a weight.
It Starts With Crawling
The chorus promises no way out: “For their fleeting approval, my own soul I hide.”
Nor does the outro. “Through the dark I will crawl.” Not walk, not climb. Crawl.
It is an honest place to start. When someone has spent years running through other people’s mirrors, the first move in their own direction is rarely an upright one. The tracks that follow will change that verb — slowly.
You can hear the track on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music.
In the next post I will write about “Unheard in the Silence” — about a scream nobody hears.
Thank you for being here.
Adam Smentoch Creator of the Dust Anthem project
