Hirons – The Rabbit Hole
Hirons—the project of British-American songwriter Jenny Hirons—releases “The Rabbit Hole,” the second single from her forthcoming debut EP, Future Perfect, out November 7th via Western Vinyl.
Following last month’s lead single “Being The Cause”—a meditation on capitalist superstructures—“The Rabbit Hole” finds Hirons speeding down narrow country lanes and gently disappearing into the ether like a dream fulfilled. On the song’s chorus she sings, “The speed won’t stop you falling down a rabbit hole / All light goes / The car forgets you, summer’s fading fast / Hide in the hedges, the animals laugh.”
“The Rabbit Hole” was born out of a dream Jenny had one hot summer’s night. She recalls: “I’m a child once again and riding in the back of a car. I notice a hole in the roadside that beckons me to enter. I escape from the car like condensation and enter a glistening, pastel world. Dolphins travel up warm turquoise streams that crosshatch rolling hills. The fruit-bearing trees twist gently in bonsai proportions and I rest in shaded thickets of moss. Suddenly, I become aware of the car and realize that I have long been abandoned.”
On Future Perfect, Hirons presents five muted pop tracks recalling Sakamoto and Hosono, Bowie and Eno, conjuring pop fantasy and confronting reality with bright-eyed steeliness. Upon listening, a multiprismatic picture of life viewed from all points in time emerges—a child imagines adulthood, an adult returns to autonomy, and ultimately, a voice from another place looks back on a child’s fantasies of the future. The effect of these songs is anything but ponderous, however. Hope, aspiration, and overcoming are the takeaways, and musically, the tone is a reflection of the artist herself — wry, cerebral, poised, and entirely charming.
Hirons cites Astor Piazolla, the Beach Boys, Elliot Smith, Deerhoof, and Rachmaninoff as musical influences. (For those who don’t know, Piazolla is an accordionist.) Hirons is also a deeply accomplished visual artist and designer. The product of several years of tinkering, Future Perfect is also a breakup EP, an unemployment EP, an uncertain future EP. Having now made it out into the world, Hirons looks back to a time when “music was the economy of our hearts”, and forward to a future allowed to shape itself however it may be, “carried home in all directions.”
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