I want to make this album about a sum summer summery day, but I can't. Because that's simplifying something that I don't even know how to simplify. Put it this way—I feel woefully unequipped to review this album. To say that "I like reggae" feels like a prime poseur move. Black-and-white televisions, shaking my ass to a ditty about a newspaper man, bass voices... to listen to it while working at a standing desk, oatmeal and peanut butter safely tucked away for safekeeping on the shelf, is just wrong. U-Roy is a giant, and I am a nothing. I am dirt on the sole of his shoe.
But am I, really?
Because then we transition to a song that I know and I get my head back into the game. "Tide is High"—how refreshingly beautiful! Why does all of life have to be so lyrical, so complicated? Why do therapists have to tell me to embrace the gray? I don't want to embrace the gray anymore. I just want things to be easy and simple.
I know U-Roy has a heavy past, without knowing the slightest detail about his life.
Dandelions bloom and I throw all my scented candles into the trash. Smoke rises as I walk away, guns blazing. Even so, the boombox keeps playing, and people keep on hanging out. Like, real hangouts. As if nothing at all has happened.
U-Roy once took a trip to Washington, DC. He hated it, so he went home.
Is reggae ever dark? Or is it just, you know, like, so, just chill, you know? I'll go with chill. Always chill.
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