I can taste his lover’s lips in his voice and feel their absence in the bass. His insomnia is the reason why I’m awake in the middle of the night blasting The Balcony. My headphones pull me into Ryan Van McCann’s reality. But at the same time, Van McCann forces me back to my own reality; The Balcony makes me look inward. This introspection reveals dark, but strong feelings and I love every second of discomfort.
This discomfort stems from the internal conflicts explored throughout the album, some of them heartbreaking. Van McCann sings in “26,” “’Cause you’ve got a mind that is so hell bent on / Fixing me up before I get my coat off.” These emotional lines not only questions why his lover is trying to fix him so quickly, but also forces us to wonder whether anything is wrong in the first place. In “Fallout,” the speaker is focused on trying to fix what the lover thinks might be wrong, stating, “So I tidied up my place / ‘Cause you always told me / It got me thinking straight.” After these efforts fail, the lyrics follow, “”You see I, I was a test-tube baby, / That’s why nobody gets me.” Everyone can relate to feelings of loneliness, but the band pushes us to a more penetrating question: do we really understand ourselves?
The album ends with “Tyrants,” an intense song that acts as an emotional capstone. Van McCann sings, “Nothing’s alright, believe me / I won’t feel the same in the mornin’.” These lyrics are extremely powerful at the end of the album, after experiencing the depressive pain and manic pleasure described earlier. The song begins with “Eyes rolled back guess we were living fast.” By the end of the album, I can really feel these words and understand what it means to live fast. Again, the way he sings forces me inward, to a specific question: am I living too fast? McCann explains, “We hit the ground yeah let’s hit the ground.” By surrendering to the relationship problems addressed earlier, the album leaves listeners exhausted.
Each individual song acts as an emotional thread, all sewn together to form The Balcony. The closer you examine each thread, the clearer it becomes that the band is not only posing questions about their own experiences, but challenging listeners to answer those questions for themselves.
This discomfort stems from the internal conflicts explored throughout the album, some of them heartbreaking. Van McCann sings in “26,” “’Cause you’ve got a mind that is so hell bent on / Fixing me up before I get my coat off.” These emotional lines not only questions why his lover is trying to fix him so quickly, but also forces us to wonder whether anything is wrong in the first place. In “Fallout,” the speaker is focused on trying to fix what the lover thinks might be wrong, stating, “So I tidied up my place / ‘Cause you always told me / It got me thinking straight.” After these efforts fail, the lyrics follow, “”You see I, I was a test-tube baby, / That’s why nobody gets me.” Everyone can relate to feelings of loneliness, but the band pushes us to a more penetrating question: do we really understand ourselves?
The album ends with “Tyrants,” an intense song that acts as an emotional capstone. Van McCann sings, “Nothing’s alright, believe me / I won’t feel the same in the mornin’.” These lyrics are extremely powerful at the end of the album, after experiencing the depressive pain and manic pleasure described earlier. The song begins with “Eyes rolled back guess we were living fast.” By the end of the album, I can really feel these words and understand what it means to live fast. Again, the way he sings forces me inward, to a specific question: am I living too fast? McCann explains, “We hit the ground yeah let’s hit the ground.” By surrendering to the relationship problems addressed earlier, the album leaves listeners exhausted.
Each individual song acts as an emotional thread, all sewn together to form The Balcony. The closer you examine each thread, the clearer it becomes that the band is not only posing questions about their own experiences, but challenging listeners to answer those questions for themselves.