Written by: Alex Green
Nostalgia is a tricky friend; with a skip in its step, it gleefully leads you down the gilded paths of the past, and as sweet as the memories may be, it’s only a matter of time before you wonder what any of it means and if memories really are the connective tissue that leads to profound truths and insights.
They might be.
Or they might not.
Either way, the lingering worry that in the end memories don’t actually come together to form a mosaic of wisdom and perspective is a terrible worry to have. Because if the roads of the past don’t lead us anywhere, then where exactly are we? We’re where we’ve always been: living a life that makes sense until it doesn’t, making decisions that feel right until they don’t.
Singer/songwriter Matthew Edwards is familiar with this brand of existential wrestling and his body of work with the Music Lovers and the Unfortunates has never been shy to confront wondering what it all means or if it means anything at all. A reflective, acoustic number that’s punctuated by gentle, undulating percussion, “Fireworks,” taken from his brilliant new album Hark, finds Edwards asking, “Will there be fireworks when we’re gone?” Bringing to mind a similar question Boo Hewerdine asked on The Bible’s “Graceland” back in 1987 (“And when I die/Will you build the Taj Mahal?”), Edwards’ query is a legitimate one, but it’s also one that’s as futile as shadowboxing and wondering if you’re throwing knockout punches. There’s just no way of knowing and that has to be good enough.
Turning the pages of his life, Edwards recalls keeping the company of both villains and dancers and, in an ends justifies the means kind of moment, he defends his journey through darkness as a tireless search for a place of belonging. It’s a defensible position, of course, because the folly of youth is supposed to add up to a satisfying future calm, where one can look back, as Edwards does, and say with satisfaction, “It’s a magical world.”
And that’s where nostalgia plays its dirtiest trick: what if the satisfying future isn’t as satisfying as the rocky roads of the past it took to get there in the first place?
It probably isn’t and Edwards’ doleful recognition that the magic in the world, like fireworks, or bonfires, are the things that don’t last, is a hushed mid-song realization that’s as powerful as anything you’ll ever hear.
“Fireworks” is a farewell lullaby to youth, to memory, to desire, to love; and like a splendid explosion of light across a dark sky, it’s less interested in the explosion itself than the sparks that extinguish one by one until the world goes black for good.
