Music Review // PICKLE JUICE "Halfway"

 

There is a certain genre of music which often gets overlooked and it's how the gritty rock n roll sound can combine with punk rock to form something like Pickle Juice.  Elements of Buckcherry and The Living End come out in this song, but it's ultimately this idea where it's fast paced and catchy enough to be punk rock but with a little bit more complexity to it, as the music itself comes from a great deal of talent.

The way that this song goes lyrically has the line in the chorus which says: "I'm sick of being halfway you and halfway me".   It's about finding your identity, finding out who you truly are, and that can be for any number of reasons.   In this music video, there is a character on the couch and also watching television.   This plays into that idea of living your life through the people you see on tv and not having it be your own.   You need to find out who you are.

But there are plenty of reasons why someone could feel like they're living two lives and one is not true to who they really are.   You could be pretending to be someone else around others for various reasons or just, as this song seems to be about, not living up to your full potential.  Maybe you do things creatively but you should be focusing on those more than just wasting your time.  Perhaps in addition to finding yourself, this song is about not squandering your gift.

Before the end of this song there is a rather long and complicated guitar solo, which does remind me of Bad Religion.   I just feel like there was a time in the late 1990's going into the early 2000's where labels like Epitaph were just putting out different types of punk music, like New Bomb Turks, and this would've just fit so well within those early Punk-O-Rama days.   Knowing that this song exists and can be used to positively motivate you though should be enough for anyone to listen.