Music Review // Tom Hanley "Take It Away"

 

The sound of Tom Hanley is catchy.   The guitars combined with vocals remind me of both Tom Petty and Billy Joel, though leaning more towards Billy Joel in the vocals.   Though at times this song can remind me of something off of a soundtrack to a movie such as "Better Off Dead", there is also just this guitar riff that brings it right back into the present tense.

As the chorus sings: "What are we supposed to do / When there's nothing left to come home to" there is also a very telling line in here that says: "He's getting richer than God / And I can barely get by".  One thing that most people in the United States have in common is even if you don't work for a company like Amazon, Walmart or McDonald's, you're still likely making enough money to barely scape by while the CEO and higher ups are buying jets.

Even though this song may not be in the genre of punk rock musically, it still has those undertones in a lyrical way as the message could very much be translated with a book such as "The Grapes of Wrath".   It's just that whole idea of rising up against those who have seemingly stacked the deck against us, never giving us any true power, and it cannot be said enough.

One of the biggest problems- and those with power do know this- facing the working class struggle is simply that we have the numbers but we can't quite get organized.  Perhaps "Take It Away" can be this song that sneaks in and makes people realize, hey, there are more of us than there are of them, let's even the score a little bit here.  IF not, it's just fun to listen to it on a sunny day.