Under The Rug - “laugh a lot”
Photo provided by Under The Rug
From Austin, Texas, Under The Rug are back on the blog with “laugh a lot,” the second single from their forthcoming two-part LP, happiness is easy.
Pressing play invites the warm and raw vocal stylings of Casey Dayan directly into your earholes, accompanied by the relentless chugging of an acoustic guitar. As sparsely as the song is at this point, “laugh a lot” does a remarkable job at saturating the sonic space as the lyrics remind you to laugh at yourself– even the most trying parts of existence are simply a reminder that life, itself, is a gift.
It is not long before a lo-fi rhythm appears, including a barebones beat and some deep notes from the bass. And even as the swelling sounds of strings start to populate the arrangement, it is still very easy to imagine “laugh a lot” being performed for you in your living room, as Under The Rug have a distinct knack for remaining true to the raw authenticity of the folk genre.
Dayan’s upper register is escorted by a delicious syncopating groove before ultimately beckoning a soothing harmony. Elements are tastefully stripped away from the production to reveal a dramatic sense of ebb and flow, leaving the emotional integrity of the track perfectly intact, then hitting the listener with a final throw of the refrain. All of this solidifies Under The Rug as one of our favorite finds since the blog’s inception.
About “laugh a lot,“ Dayan adds: “So many times I’ve woken up into the worst parts of my life and laughed, and I think that’s beautiful somehow. That tension, between the awfulness and the laughing… I was once a closeted trans person in a motel where I was made to do things I didn’t want to. I remember staring at a roach on a lamp, its little antennae kind of waving mundanely, like it was saying hello or goodnight. In that moment, that cockroach was as good a friend to me as any—and isn’t that sweet? How something we usually consider to be so bad could also be so good?”
“laugh a lot” is another glorious morsel of sound from Under The Rug’s forthcoming thirty-song album, which we simply cannot wait to get our hand on. We are confident that you will feel the same as soon as you press that play button.