// Letters to YVYNYL //

premiere: The News - Stranger Danger

 / Philadelphia-based duo Rachel Haines and Benjamin James have been sending me some great pop over the past few months, and though this one is slightly more somber it’s got a solid story and they wanted to use this lens to describe their feelings.

Hi Mark,

“Stranger Danger,” the third song we have recorded wrestles with the emotional turmoil that loved ones go through during the moments after a traumatic event occurs.  Specifically there was an abduction case that happened a couple years ago out on the Mainline section of Philadelphia, and although the abductee was ultimately found, the mental anguish suffered seemed to reverberate for long there after, with not only those directly involved, but also with those within the community in which this crime was committed. This type of crime simply doesn’t happen in those affluent suburbs of Philadelphia… until it does.

Without going into too much detail, the troubling thing that really resonated with area residents was the true random nature of the crime, and that their was seemingly no premeditation nor connection to the victim at all.  It was this level of uneasiness and unknown that “stranger danger,” was conceived.  The protagonist of the song seeks refuge with others in order to feel more safe.  It’s sort of a “safety in numbers”  sort of thing.  

The News for better or for worse, to date, has written songs that are of a more personal nature, often coloring them musically with shinier melodies that the lyrics tend to implicate.  We gravitate to that certain sense of melancholy that lives just below the surface of a song.  Our favorite songs do that, and it is something that we strive for, because frankly, we think it adds depth to the material.

In the abduction case we were drawing from, we perceived of a double-edged tragedy, one that played out with the immediate family and the victim, but also the uneasiness that befell the community where the crime took place.  How do we move forward? how do we feel safe again? how do we get back to a place of comfort?  is it even possible?  This type of physiological warfare,  is so often the intended goal of terrorist acts that we read and so often feel desensitized toward in the news, but it is only when we can imagine ourselves in such situation, or it happens in our backyard, do we start to truly take notice and pay attention.  

We are not writing a lecture, for this song, merely working through a very specific set of feelings, and trying to make sense of them.  There are no over arching take aways or conclusions, just a solace that we tend to have, when we know that we are “all going through something together.”  

Enjoy the song.

rachel

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