Music Review // Rosscoe Frantz "Raw and Bitter"

 

As "Raw and Bitter" begins, you'll hear this slow, mellow rock sound accompanied by the big vocals of Rosscoe Frantz.  This reminds me a bit of Snow Patrol, in a mainstream way, but there is just also this atmospheric way about this sound.  On top of that, at times it can even feel like post rock.  A guitar solo drifts us off into this instrumental bridge, but the song does return for one last set of lyrics.  They just don't make songs like this any more because everything seems to want to be faster and heavier, or slower and softer, but Rosscoe Frantz has found this beautiful in between.

When listening to "Raw and Bitter" you'll hear lyrics about the Winter and in that way Rosscoe Frantz uses the seasons to illustrate the mood of the song.  This feels like a very personal love letter of sorts, but a letter of a love that once was but is now lost.   This can be made apparent in lyrics such as: "And see the life we could be living / If I dared a little more", which makes it feel like we could always be doing a little bit more- not just in love but in general- to be the people we wish to be.    We always need to go that extra mile and for good reason.

The chorus has a nice hook which says: "Not sure how much time had passed / Since everything turned raw and bitter".  As this song is released today, and I'm writing about it, there is a calendar date that today is the first day of Spring.  Winter is over.  But that's only on paper.  You don't really know when Winter is over until you can look back and think about how it hasn't snowed in enough time that you've moved onto Spring.  Love can be a lot like that, and I feel it in those lyrics, where you might not always know when it ended until some time later.  Then you can look back and see it like that last Winter snow.

There is just something about this song from the tempo to the lyrics which makes it feel so peaceful as we transition from Winter into Spring.  Everything feeling "Raw and Bitter" is physically like when you step outside and that cold just hits you, but there is also a way about it when you're in love.  Now, we should be able to start going outside and not feeling that cold air, so in a similar way we should begin healing otherwise and that will make for the Spring time to be a new beginning of sorts, a time for things to not be "Raw and Bitter" but rather what comes next.