Brooklyn-based Horsepower, the project of Charlotte Weinman, wrestles with love, mistreatment and dissociation on ‘Do you think you can live without dying every day?’, taken from forthcoming EP Happiest Day of My Life, out November 20 via Rose Garden. Beginning with acoustic guitar and Weinman’s emotional vocal, the track gradually draws drums and electric guitar into its orbit.
Clean, jangling textures sit alongside flashes of distortion, giving the song a softer 90s alt-rock and grunge feel as it spirals towards a cathartic release. Eventually everything falls away, returning Weinman to where she began: alone with her acoustic guitar. There’s melancholy in that retreat, but an unexpected sense of peace too, before the title arrives as the song’s final lingering question.
The accompanying video makes that emotional dislocation tangible. Weinman wanders a funfair, riding the carousel and Ferris wheel, playing games and watching banger cars, while other scenes find her peering into a doll’s house or playing guitar alone in the darkness. Surrounded by places and objects associated with fun, ‘Do you think you can live without dying every day?’ quietly asks what happens when you can no longer tell whether you’re enjoying any of it.
