Live Review: Midas.Gold pays tribute to his Peter Pan on '19 Forever'
On '19 Forever', Midas Gold pays tribute to a lost friend, blurring the lines between R&B, hip hop and emo-tinged ballads on his most vulnerable track yet
MIDAS.GOLD has just unveiled his new single ‘19 Forever’, a touching dedication to a lost friend, whom Midas calls his own “Peter Pan”. The first instalment in a three part musical narrative covering the themes of loss, suffering and redemption, ‘19 Forever’ uncovers a depth of vulnerability that the Brisbane rapper has never exposed before, swapping out the rattling trap sounds of singles like ‘Poppin’’ and ‘Location’ for a more downcast tempo and introspective lyricism.
Midas’ strong melodic inclinations have always been a low-key presence on previous singles, but here, for the first time, he draws those tendencies out to the forefront of his music, layering his introspective lyricism with lush, emotive melodies. Using the spacious production work of JAMES ANGUS, a woozy, cycling guitar line and filtered drums, ‘19 Forever’ blurs the lines between melodic hip hop, R&B and emo-tinged ballads in a similar aesthetic vein to the likes of LIL PEEP, JUICE WRLD or, a bit closer to home, TRIPLE ONE during their softer moments. It brings a whole new emotional dimension to Midas’ work: you can hear him ruminating over his words during the opening chorus, as if he’s using the spaces in between to try and untangle how he feels, and you can sense his hesitancy to open up in the shy melody and the gentle guitars.
Every now and then Midas’ lyrics slip back into bittersweet remembrances of hooking up with girls together, of nights spent walking the streets of the West Side, of attending random house parties just to score some free weed, of thinking this is what constituted all of your dreams coming true. These memories radiate with an adolescent abandon that flickers through his lyricism before they are promptly extinguished by his grown realisation that now when he thinks about those girls he hooked up with what he’s really thinking about is how “to hear you laugh is the thing I miss”, or how he can’t make new friends without wondering if his old friend would’ve approved or not. Midas is plagued by memories of his friend that suffuse his everyday life, his past always encroaching on his present.
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The fractured lyricism and the hazy, fugue atmosphere of the track work beautifully to give a musical shape to Midas’ psychological state, where feelings of grief, nostalgia, remorse, anger, confusion and helplessness all imperceptibly bleed into one another in the face of loss. By the time ‘19 Forever’ cycles back around to the chorus at the very end his hesitancy has become something like acceptance. Backed by rolling snares and a quietly swelling instrumental, Midas.Gold finds something beautiful in staying 19 forever.
IMAGE: Jaffles Designs via Facebook
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