L O V E I T V I O L E T Featuring Johnny Sanders – ROMAN CANDLES (Single Review)

The prolific LOVEITVIOLET Featuring Johnny Sanders is back with yet another single,‘ROMAN CANDLES’. It’s a song with an interesting title, but roman candles are not exactly a romantic thing: they’re fireworks. Behind the vocals is a lady, and this time she sounds white. I mention this because the artist is fond of using vocals of different races in their music. In terms of instrumentation, the strings here sound twangy, but slightly so, with an almost throbbing beat in the background. Overall, the instrumentation sounds subdued. That’s the feeling I get since, from memory, I remember the artist’s other songs having upbeat instrumentation,

The story of the song is that we have at least three characters: an unnamed addressee, Sophie Lavendore and Sophie’s old man, to say nothing about the lyrical persona. The setting, as far as the explicit lyrics, is the old man’s garden. The addressee, as we hear from the narrator, catches a glimpse of Sophie, perhaps speaking to their interest in the lady, if we are to take Sophie as a female. However, the lyrical persona seems to caution our addressee from paying too much attention to Sophie.

‘Best hold tight to your reigns before your fall’, the female singer goes, her voice almost chilled, although it soars a bit as the song goes.

‘Dust yourself off the ash pit’, we also hear, the idiom meaning, if we are to read it as figurative, to recover from total despair.

These metaphors bring depth to the story. One then is in a game of deciphering, unless perhaps they are familiar with American metaphors, ‘Roman Candles’ being basically a song about healing.

Another interesting metaphorical lyric goes, ‘iodine and four sips and then tossed into an interstate’ – the iodine being a nasty way to recover.

As the song goes, the artist creates imagery in our mind of Sophie pulling loose, fresh apricots. She drops them in the shoebox ‘for granddaddy’s marmalade’, we hear.

What we can also deconstruct from the song is that Sophie has cornmeal hair, her birth is a different kind of birth.

At the song’s end, we hear of ‘iodine and sips of four persimmon in your kisses from sophie lavendore’.

SCORE/Good: You kinda expect upbeat music from the artist, but hey, one has to appreciate the story and instrumentation in the song. A song of healing perhaps, necessitates some chilled singing and instrumentation. For that, I’d say this is a good song to listen to for zoning into a sober or somber mood.

[We rank singles, EPs, and albums on a scale of Poor, Mediocre, Good, Excellent, and Outstanding]