Every week, the Milwaukee Music Premiere sponsored by Density Studios connects the city’s artists with our listening audience. If you’re an artist with a track you’d like us to debut exclusively on Radio Milwaukee, head over to our Music Submission page to learn how.
You can’t always write about yourself. It’s true in every literary scenario, even one as relatively brief as songwriting. Milwaukee alt-rock group 5pm to Nowhere went the route of adopting a different perspective for “Clouds Break,” which makes its debut here today, and thought well outside the bounds of everyday life for their subject.
From the most general of viewpoints, the new track will resonate with anyone who has experienced a moment of discovery. More specifically, the band gravitated toward the larger of these moments — in the case of this song, “a person seeing the sun for the first time.”
Maddeningly, they didn’t share why this individual had yet to encounter the center of our solar system and reason for our very existence. Is it a baby? A lifelong cave dweller? An alien traveling through space who was born on their spaceship and somehow managed to never encounter another star on their journey? We may never know.
I also get the sense that’s not the point of the song (or they would’ve written about said baby or caveperson or alien). Rather, it’s about evoking a feeling and a greater understanding of our place in the world — perhaps in the universe as a whole:
There's a light above all reason
Far beyond what man can conjure
Sky of white and gold and crimson
To an end that lasts forever
Later, Jacob Webb more directly addresses the dumbfoundedness that comes with discovery as he sings, “The day alights upon my face / And I don't know what to say / For the first time in my life.” It’s a line that comes toward the end of “Clouds Break,” which to that point keeps things relatively reserved but finds enough time to work in a climax of more emphatic percussion and Coldplay-esque “whoa-oh-ohs” from Webb — anthemic while still being reflective.
You can listen to “Clouds Break” anytime using the player at the top of the page, it’ll spin on 88Nine throughout today (7:30 and 11:30 a.m.; 3:30 and 7:30 p.m.), and you’ll also find it on 5pm to Nowhere’s upcoming EP that’ll be out later this year.
