Singled Out: Will Powers' Same

Keavin Wiggins | 12-14-2020

Will Powers recently release a new EP entitled "Same" and to celebrate we have asked mastermind Oli Palkovits to tell us about the title track. Here is the story:

This song was put together in an odd way, over about a year's time. It happened in two spurts. I first wrote the guitar riffs for "Same" around June of 2018, and it was initially headed in this folk-stomp direction. I imagined it would have some banjo firing off and harmonicas wailing and the whole lot. It went through a handful of variations in my head before it got the proper treatment it needed with the band.

The lyrics came almost a year later. It was probably six in the morning and I hadn't slept yet. I was wired after a night, so I started drawing up a poster for a Bicycle Day show depicting Jesus face to face with Albert Hoffman. For better or for worse, the drawing didn't resemble anything I imagined, so I abandoned that idea for another meaning the image took on. I saw two humans, one young and one old, desperately needing to connect (see eye to eye). Despite their inability to communicate that feeling (pursed lips), each can sense the divide between them, but neither know how to bridge that widening gap. An acknowledgement of mutual misunderstanding can be made, but that can't be said so much as shown - it needs to be acted out in real time and sustained.

The new interpretation inspired a poem, which became the lyrics to "Same". I should mention that the poem wasn't written to the tune of the song, but I brought both together as an experiment and happened to work out. After a few tweaks, the two fit together and I stuck with it. A few unexpected turns led to the centerpiece of the dual EPs.

ONE BEING, FLOWING IN
THE BEAUTY OF YOUTH
UPON THE BROW, OVERSHADOWED
IS A HISTORY OF PROOF
THAT THOSE WHO ARE
USED TO HOLD THEIR
NOSE SO HIGH
MUST LOOK FOR A TRUCE
IF THEY ARE TO SEE
EYE TO EYE

THOUGH BETWEEN, MIGHT IT SEEM
A CANYON'S ERODING
ALL THE EMPTY SPACE YOU SEE
IS NOT FOREBODING, NO!
STILL, PURSED
ARE THE LIPS WHICH
CANNOT PUT FORTH THE NAME
BUT EACH CAN ACKNOWLEDGE
THAT WE ARE(,)
ALL THE SAME

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more about the EP here