MORE FROM ARCADE FIRE/WILD LIGHT CO-FOUNDER TIM KILE

Tim Kile sent us over another track titled "My Medicine," and it's the 5th single from the Arcade Fire and Wild Light co-founder's new album, “These Are Things Being Gathered For The Fire”, which is due out in April. Like Tim’s other track that we reviewed a few weeks ago it again builds on the overall aesthetic of early 2000’s indie rock. With keyboards being the main instrument we hear throughout the track it’s reminiscent of a mellower Mates of State overall vibe but with a vocal that is in line with Nada Surf maybe mixed with a little Guided By Voices. The vocal to me is a little indistinct but also nice and fitting for the music. The backing harmony adds a nice touch throughout. I appreciate bands who can throw a little bit of a Motown feel into their songs, like this has the Four Tops written all over it from the keyboard sounds and the drumming to the lower backing vocals but Tim’s voice and the higher backing vocals is what brings it into this decade. The vintage organ will have you feeling nostalgic for the tones of classics like Booker T. & The MG’s. I love when artists can cull from all of their inspirations over the past 60 or so years of music and turn it into contemporary material. 

Here is what Tim’s thoughts are on what inspired the song: 

“There are a few different ways I think about the song’,” says Kile. “One is very literal and direct. I suffer from massive, debilitating depression. It runs in my family. My mom suffered horribly through the years. For all the stigma attached to people with brain illnesses and the medications used to treat them, it’s one of the biggest decisions in someone’s life to go on meds. No one wants to do it. You usually need to be in desperately bad shape before you submit.” 

Along life’s journey, Kile saw how his mother’s perspective change when she received the help she needed. 

“I remember how she described when she  finally went on meds,” he adds. “She called it  ‘an awakening’. Suddenly she had new creativity, energy, health. That language stuck with me -- ‘an awakening.’ It was the way you’d describe a religious conversion. There was something compelling to me about that, the combination of modern psychological medication with religious language, and I tried to write the song from that paradox. ‘The message in the wires in my mind, this dirt and spit - drop the scales from my eyes’.” 

However, the songwriter, who is set to release debut solo album These Things Are Being Gathered for the Fire in April, sees the song’s meaning with a certain flexibility too. 

“That’s sort of the narrow, specific way of interpreting it,” Kile admits. “I can also see it in a more universal sense. It’s about what heals you, what fixes the damage, orders the chaos. It’s about not waiting for the next world. It’s here, it’s now, this world is the next world.” 

“All that said,” Kile says with a laugh, “I am also totally satisfied with the song being interpreted as a weed anthem.”

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- Sam Lowry
 

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