Review: “Cotton Candy Skies” by Seth Fonda
“Cotton Candy Skies” by Seth Fonda is an album of great spectacle that covers the scattershot purging that follows one’s first real entanglement with heartbreak. This is an album with a clear ambition of being universal, the production style is high-energy and very poppy.
Performance-wise, I was rather impressed by Fonda’s vocals, which cover a wide octave and include pretty falsetto, melodic runs, and belting. The inclusion of jazz, pop, and rock influences, as well as creative usage of synth pads, ensure every song is atmospheric. Sounds good so far, right?
There’s not a bad song to be found here. However, much as watching clouds roll past as you’re lying on your back, there is only so much variation in what is offered. Instrumentally, this is a vibrant, groovy, soulful album, but the lyrics only sometimes hit home. Additionally, I didn’t get a good sense of placement or personhood, which is odd for a work dealing with such vulnerability and rawness.
There are some really excellent lines in here, but a majority of it seems to be less about any literal meaning and more about the sound of it, a kind of echolalia on love.
Perhaps in this sense “Cotton Candy Skies” is exactly what its title would suggest — the experience of laying on your back and allowing the various thoughts and emotions of your life to drift in and out of your awareness. But I’m no daydreamer.
Tracks
1. “Intro”
Nothing too out of the ordinary, this track is a sort of mellotron intro reminiscent of “Gold Day” by Sparklehorse that gives way to Fonda talking, I assume, to a former romantic partner or maybe just a crush. It’s a roadmap of the obsession he has for a woman, the irresistibility of speaking about it, and the foregone conclusion of failure in it.
There’s a sort of Rugrats synth pad in there which lends a lightheartedness. This is in sharp contrast to the bitterness, which isn’t well explored here; it’s just stated clearly that he’s suffering. I assume this is setting up the tone and direction of the rest of the album, but there’s not much of a story arc here: guy falls for girl, girl doesn’t reciprocate, guy obsesses and writes an album about it.
2. “Mind For Body”
For my tastes, the album really starts here. I especially liked the line, “Does faith forget its meaning when worry calls its name.” This is a coffee shop, bossa-nova-esque tune that’s slow with steam rising off the top and curling around your face. It talks about superficiality, the predatory transaction that happens when one preys on another’s insecurities. It is pure aural velveteen.
3. “From Me to You”
I get serious John Mayer “Gravity” vibes with the drum intro on this track. It’s got some good hooks, but the poppiness makes me feel I’ve heard this song before. Perhaps this familiarity makes it a bit of a letdown.
That said, it’s by no means inauthentic. In another light, Fonda’s performance here would be heart-wrenching, intimate, and beautiful. In this case, the musical landscape he’s walking on is well-trodden, and I can’t hold that against him. The rub is that it’s more or less a series of platitudinous personal statements and questions — pretty sounds with no clear destination, another cloud.
4. “Cotton Candy Skies”
This tune shakes off the familiar quality before hopping right back into the radio-friendly sound. There’s Amy Winehouse vibes here without the gravity and grit, which is completely appropriate for a song with this title. Superlative language abounds, but the choral breakdown is reminiscent of a boy’s choir in a subway terminal, which is neat.
The atmosphere in this song is wildly successful. The lyrics remind me of the Zombies but, again, this is well-trodden musical ground.
5. “Never Know”
This track opens with some spacious chorus guitar and then an extension of the navel-gaze meditation on love that has so far defined this album. There’s a little bit of heaviness I appreciate, at least with the guitar and bass chugging along in lock-step. This is a bar song for folks who are tourists in the land of depression.
The instrumentation completely carries this tune with seriously fun evolutions into different spaces and heights. The lyrics. unfortunately. are super repetitive, so this is another tune to lock in and sort of tune out to.
6. “I’ll Be Here — Live”
A self-pitying tune with lines like “I am an example of what tragedy should follow” and “Who I am has lost its way.”
I think going solo acoustic on this is fitting. It seems more a showcase of Fonda’s music chops vocally and on guitar (both of which sound beautiful) than anything else. However, on close listening, the lyrics here are … strange. Ideas and concepts are anthropomorphized: “This game of chase is always on the move”; “Who I am has lost its way in loneliness.” Another cloud, oddly shaped and listing.
7. “For One to Be Happy”
This actually sounds like an original artist named Seth Fonda. Yes, it’s poppy with a sing-song rhyme scheme, but god damn if it doesn’t work here. The lyrics in this song are by far the most powerful. The emotion is dialed in just right, and there’s space to let the words hang and be consumed. It’s a sugar rush with time to breath.
By the time the heart-piercingly understated guitar solo comes in at 1:50, the talent and care Fonda has put into this track is crystal clear and brilliant. This song is redemptive and makes the album worth the listen. Everything is unified in a supercritical triumph.
8. “These Arms”
Another atmospheric bit, this track has a church vibe. There are some audio artifacts that interrupt what would otherwise be a fairly squeaky clean song. The short duration of the song and the sparse instrumentation make for a pleasant, but ultimately unnecessary, interlude that somehow takes away from the success of “For One to Be Happy.”
9. “Momentary Love”
We see the mellotron from “Intro” return here. The Rugrats synth makes a return here too, but it’s more in line with what’s going on musically. This is a beautiful song that evokes Frank Ocean’s “Channel Orange” in some of its best, chillest moments. By the time you get to it in a full album listen, though, you’ll likely be a little fatigued from the intensity of the sound throughout.
The Verdict
What is undeniable here is Seth Fonda’s musicianship, passion, and fearlessness in swinging for the fences. The results are mixed, unfortunately. There are true moments of brilliance and genuinely annihilating feeling here. Fonda invites us to share in his feelings on love, and sometimes you’ll be crying right along with him.
Other times, the lyrics feel dialed in, playing to a pop tradition of songwriting that’s marked by generic language without the basic elements of place, time, and reason. Thankfully, being a first release, these things are completely excusable. Serious talent is put into this music, and if the lyrical quality can be improved, Fonda can reach great heights artistically.
As for the album itself, I can only recommend certain songs. A whole listen is fatiguing. I think this could be remedied in part by making a different cut. Remove the songs “These Arms,” “I’ll Be Here,” and “Intro.” Put “Momentary Love” as the first song and end with “For One to Be Happy.”
In essence, this is a release that suffers from too much as opposed to too little, and that is a beautiful problem to have.
