Why buy yourself flowers when they’re just going to wither and die?
If that sounds nihilistic, that’s because that’s what heartbreak can often create of us, and this is something that Ciaran Murray of Arcade State knows all too well.
It was around this time last year that Flowers by Miley Cyrus topped the charts around the world. An anthem of the liberation that comes with self-love. A song of empowerment, if you will.
But Arcade State’s Flowers isn’t an empowering ode to life after loss. Not even close. It’s an authentic and confessional piece of naked vulnerability that follows the universal experience of heartbreak.
Released just after Valentine’s Day, this single reminds us that flowers aren’t just a commercial display of deep affection, but the other side of a coin with a cruel exchange rate: grief. Regardless of the currency, Murray shows that even in the dark, there’s beauty to be found.
“It was written during a period of time when it felt like everything beautiful in life had been ripped from the ground by its roots and left to wither and die,” he says.
‘Save me,’ Murray’s vocals plea through various verses. A sensibility that is echoed in every instrument: from the pitch of the guitar, to the fills of the drum. Flowers is a cry for help. It’s a duel of all that comes with grief. Rage filled drums and a weeping guitar. A melodic dance between anger and sadness.
Yet where in anger, blocked musicians once reached for their musical weapons, Arcade State reach for flowers, and you’ll find that this is their stamp. Transmuting pain into hope; tragedy into great art.
As the bridge approaches, underpinned with the whine of a guitar on a rampage, Murray whispers ‘shh’, a clearly failed effort to silence the cries that follows. You’ve been there. I’ve been there. We’ve all been there.
As rage-fuelled as this single is, it’s anything but messy. It doesn’t feel like fleeting, teenage puppy love that ends in a petty tiff. It’s heartbreak intellectualised. It’s romance that matured until its subsequent death. And all that’s left is love in memoriam.