Groove Saloon’s Daniel McBurnie and Graham Gomez have released their second single, “Let Me Down.” The duo retook music with their first release, “If I Don’t Make It,” only a few months prior.
The track highlights the band’s unique style, blending outrageously funky basslines and shimmering synths with deeply emotional lyrics.
“The song is about the sort of cowardice that you can feel in a relationship that is stagnant,” Gomez said. “I feel a lot of people have experienced that where one or both people are just waiting for things to happen on their own, and all the while life is happening around you.”
“The song ‘Let Me Down’ is not so much a lament of ‘you’re supposed to feel sorry for the voice,’” McBurnie said. “It’s almost poking fun at itself because the voice is saying, ‘Come on, go ahead, break up with me.’”
Similar to “If I Don’t Make It,” Groove Saloon created the video and song, which were both done entirely at home with virtually no budget.
“We’ve been doing it like that since we were young,” McBurnie said. “It’s not even a studio microphone; we have a live performance SM58 microphone set up on a stand, and that’s what we track all our vocals with. It’s hilariously [do-it-yourself].”
Vancouver-based tattoo artist Devon Sigurdson inadvertently inspired the duo by showing them an old animated short from their film school days called “Nugs Gone Wild.”
Captivated by the quirky concept, McBurnie and Gomez transformed what they saw into a full Groove Saloon music video.
“In a way, the silliness of the video, by design, almost doesn’t match with the mood of the lyrics, which has kind of been what we’ve gone for in our first single,” McBurnie said.
“I feel like [the animation] works with the video. It’s silly imagery of this little nugget dancing around, and the voice [in the song] hasn’t matured; it’s just stuck in a loop,” Gomez said.
Groove Saloon will release new songs in the upcoming months, hoping to turn them into a full EP.“Let Me Down” is now available on all streaming services, as well as iTunes and Bandcamp, and can be found here.