Majical Cloudz: "Downtown"
Downtown is a state of mind; the details might change from person to person, or song to song, but the feeling of endless possibility remains. For ‘60s singer Petula Clark, downtown was all bright lights and tall buildings, a place of gleaming wonder, where “everything’s waiting for you.” In 1983, it represented something beautifully grubby for Jackson Browne: a locale populated by blue-collar dreams, rats, and winos, where the best and worst of humanity collided, making you feel alive. And when horndog R&B boy band Pretty Ricky sang of “going downtown” in 2009, their destination was decidedly more intimate—but equally ecstatic.
Majical Cloudz’s latest single both pays tribute to and deconstructs the joyous downtown pop lineage. Rather than being in the middle of any sort of hustle and bustle, frontman Devon Welsh sounds like he’s eyeing Broadway from a thousand feet above, levitating. Wisps of droning organ hold him up as he finds his own downtown in another person. “Nothing you say will ever be wrong,” he starts, “‘cause it just feels good being in your arms.” On their face, Welsh’s words could almost read as bubblegum, but the starkness of the arrangement and the gravitas of his delivery hint at the emptiness around him—he could fall to Earth at any moment. Hardly one for needless obfuscation, the songwriter puts a point on this dark spectre by ghostwriting his own eulogy: “And if suddenly I die/ I hope they will say/ That he was obsessed, and it was OK.” Life and love will pass, but downtown is forever.
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