Music Review // MUKI "Reflections"

 

When this song first begins I hear acoustics like Plain White T's but I'm also reminded of Collective Soul somehow.  MUKI has managed to create this sound which feels like it is acoustics in front of electronics, with this pop sound but at the same time it can feel like it's going back to the more melodic era of late 1990's rock.   This just feels like someone who is as influenced by early Green Day (think "Nimrod" era) as they are a band like Snow Patrol and it just makes for such a great and relaxing sound.

Lyrically this song is the very definition of the word "ponder".  The idea is that a room is full of mirrors and so all of these reflections are of you.  Not only is that something some people might need to unpack, but at the same time the way this song uses it is as that sort multiverse theory where every choice we make leads us down a different path.  "Reflections" is that idea of wondering what your life would've been like if you had gone to college instead of working for your family business straight out of high school- those types of what if's.

This feels like a universal theme as we all seem to have made choices in our lives and we can wonder what would be different if we hadn't.   Sometimes life can make that decision for you, such as if you're fired from a job, but I remember at least two times in my life when I was made multiple job offers and I still wonder what would have happened had I chosen the other.  At the same time, I also always like to think about what would have happened if a national company I was working at didn't go out of business but I had no control over that.

The most important line in this song feels like: "At every turn I chose to be the man who turned out to be me".  Some things in life you cannot control, but how you react to them can be controlled.  I feel like this song just best describes how we are who we are because of our past and if you changed something about it then a large part of us would change as well.   As this song winds down in a full on electric, dreamy type of way, perhaps we need to hear this just to know that we shouldn't stress over what could have been but rather take comfort in knowing what made us who we are.