Review: "Here For Now" Album by Louis the Child
Louis the Child (Robby Hauldren and Freddy Kennett) released their latest album ‘Here for Now’ on June 26th; a 14-song track list. It’s crazy. This album creates this energy and nature of the feeling of arrival, or coming into existence: a welcoming. Welcoming humans. As if our earth was starting over again.
‘Here For Now’ plays out like a How-to-Human simulation for dummies of the 21st century. Teaching humans how to live presently, how to be a person, and how to navigate love. Some seemingly simple attributes to being a characteristically good person.
The whole album embodies this theme, but we’ll narrow it down to the 3 major songs that explore these ideals; starting with Track 4: “Little Things”.
“Little Things”, produced beautifully by the amazingly talented Jon Bellion, and brought to life with vocals from Chelsea Cutler and Quinn XCII (team visionary music group’s greatest). The first lesson of this guide: how to live presently. “Little Things”…A song about appreciating, just that.
“And there will be come when a time when we’re slowin’ down
We’ll hold onto memories, memories
‘Til then, let’s wreck shit and hold it down”
It’s simple. All we have to do is, SLOW DOWN, as humans were so focused on What’s next? What’s trending? Who’s doing what? And Who’s going where? A reminder to live in the moment, and not worry about what’s going to happen next.
Then, at the end of the song you have this beautiful outro:
It’s like the professor at the end of class “okay, class you are free to go! But just remember…”
“Every single second is golden
Hold on to the moment
Hold on to the moment”
It’s such pure advice. It’s just the little things...
Now, that you have mastered the concept of gratitude, you will now learn the ins-and-outs of being a person and feeling emotions with Track 7: “Don’t Mind”. What this track does, is it explores the ideas of pressure, and feeling the need to exist for something or someone else. It’s a conversation with yourself. Hearing all of the stressors and then reacting positively to it. This song teaches you how to take care of yourself when you feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.
You hear the outside world telling you:
“Don’t mind
Don’t waste no time
Don’t make no lie
Don’t break no promises”
You hear the entire world just telling you “Don’t”. So, what do you do?
Just take a step back and tell yourself, all you have to do is:
“ [Try] to get to brighter days
You don't have to feel okay
It's okay
No you don't have to try
To try, to try to change it”
And! …
“No you don't have to wear
All these faces ”
*deep breath* and let it go.
The next challenge of the simulation is a much harder one to grasp: love.
Track 9: Get Together.
“We've got to get ourselves together
Like what's it gonna be?”
I think that the lesson here is embedded; open to interpretation. Because, can you actually teach someone how to love? Sure. Maybe, but I think the lesson here is that sometimes you just have to let the love run its course. And that’s it. That’s all you can do.
Louis the Child uses this album to shine light on some of the intricacies of the human existence, that often (too often), get overshadowed. Appropriately titled “Here For Now”, a reminder to all of us humans that we are literally only here… for now. We only borrow time on this planet, so let’s not waste it and at least try to be better.
Louis the Child starts the album with what I picture as a spaceship preparing to arrive on a new planet... and ends with Track 14: “Fade Away”. A full circle apparatus of our lives. This song is a celebration. Because, we did it, and at the end of our time on our earth, when we cease to exist on this planet, what will happen to us?