Music Review // Newbridge "Iroquois"

 

As much as the song "Iroquois" can feel like it is a love song about meeting and falling in love with someone as a person, it also just has the overall feeling that you are falling in love with a place.  This is described in this song by Newbridge both because of lyrics about the time spent there and because of lines such as: "The fields are evergreen / The roads all dirt".  We don't always get songs that are odes to places you can live or just experience as far as towns/cities go, but I definitely feel like we need more of them about places that aren't like New York City.  

Newbridge begins this song with these winding guitars and strings like violins come in as well.  This takes us on a journey which can be part country, part folk and a whole lot of Americana.  There is a storytelling way about this song too which just makes me feel, musically, that it is the type of song Neil Young might have created.  There are some background vocals and before the song ends it also kicks into a more electric way.

While this song tells a story, the lyrics begin at first with the lines: "What am I doing here alone / Far away from home", but then they grow into the love of the land, followed lastly by the idea that eventually you know the time is going to come when you have to leave.  It just doesn't feel like there is enough storytelling in music these days, especially of this level because this is the complete- it goes from start to finish- and there once was a time when more songs were like that.

One of my favorite things about this song is that it's about a place that you might have never been or even thought about going, but after listening to the song you likely will.  To paint such a picture that can make you want to be a part of something, but also just to have lines in the chorus to sing along with like: "I found true love in Iroquois la dee da dee da" shows how Newbridge can embrace both the simple and complex sides of music, bringing them together to truly move you.