From his EP ‘Margaret Thatcher Of The Lower East Side‘ comes the new single by Seán Barna, the punning ‘God Save the Scene‘. It’s an odd title for an EP, perhaps, but Barna explains it thusly “as a songwriter — an observer, really — this feeling is compounded by the social anxiety of my peer group of weirdos, queers, and artists living in an increasingly hostile, hateful America. Through art, music, performance, and substance abuse, they stand their ground. Even evil people like Margaret Thatcher realised you needed to be a steely bitch to survive in this world. “
On this song, which also features Dave Immergluck from Counting Crows on mandolin and pedal steel, Barna sings lead as well as playing drums and rhythm guitar. Simply put ‘God Save the Scene‘ is Barna expanding on his pessimism for the future – nothing short of the end of the world. As he says, he was “driving across Nebraska in the middle of the night. All I could think about was how climate change is going to end our coastal societies and how we may all need to move to Nebraska. The inherent anxiety in that thought was compounded by my feeling that we are depraved as a society, so much so that we choose hate over love, division over unity, and Donald Trump over, well, literally anything else. “Let’s reduce our serotonin intake,” is to say: the party is fucking over — as citizens with a voice, we must speak, loud and clear, against the darker parts of our society.”
Photo: Blair LeBlanc
