Alwyn Morrison explores themes like betrayal, judgment and resilience on his engrossing new EP Trial
A New York City based alternative rock artist who has been lauded on this site and beyond for the thoughtful and compelling nature of his sound, Alwyn Morrison has found success over the last years writing songs that often revolve around themes like romance and love, which saw him drawn to four tracks that he had written that felt like a step away from this, which have formed his new EP Trial due to the way that began to resemble the stages of a legal proceeding over time.
The opening track on the EP is ‘Puzzle Piece’, a release that serves as the charging document, a track that sees the artist blindsided by a betrayal from somebody who he truly thought was the final piece to his puzzle as the title suggests. The atmsopheric and defiant feel of the sound does a great job of upping the stakes and setting the tone for the EP, and it makes for a really invigorating and fun listen that has a cathartic, resonating feel to it.
The evidence is gathered on the hard-edged and emotionally charged ‘Everybody Bleeds’, a track that sees the artist continuing to delve into the uglier sides of life and love in compelling fashion. The line “everybody bleeds when they are broken” hits hard, and offers a really powerful articulation as to the damage that we can do to others as she try to navigate our way through our own journeys.
There is a more over-arching and all-encompassing message to ‘Monster’, a track that has some really personal and vulnerable moments with a message that stretches far and wide across a range of universal situations. The track explores the way that we can often feel villified and cast aside for choices and mistakes that we make, even if that mistake is just loving the wrong person and the ramifications that it can have. It offers a real sense of clarity and the emotional swell that the previous tracks have been building towards, making for a really memorable listen that leaves a real impression.
The fourth and final track on the EP is ‘Fireflies’, a track that feels like a sense of liberation and freedom from all of the judgment and perception that has come before it, offering a sense of defiance and renewall in the fallout. It is a track that offers a really resonating and optimistic end to an EP that is fraught full of emotion, strong feelings, betrayal, and the need to survive and grow, and it feels like the light at the end of a tunnel that was packed full of transformative experiences.
