"Winding Ivy" by The Lulls in Traffic, Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Tracking the career of Aaron Marsh reveals a musical diversity rarely seen in artists today. Educated at a performing arts high school, Marsh learned horns and strings. He went on to form Copeland, which was a guitar-based rock band in their early days, taking influence from groups like Gin Blossoms and post-grunge bands. The band's trajectory strayed from rock to experimental electronic music, and Marsh took on other musical ventures, featuring on several projects for bands like Underoath and Anberlin and producing other artists, such as The Myrid, Anberlin, and This Wild Life.
I FOUND YOU DARKER THAN THE SKY ABOVE. In 2017, Marsh provided the sung chorus on the politically-charged Propaganda track, "Cynical," a song that lambastes American Christian white nationalism. However, a month before Propaganda's Crooked Ways was released, Aaron Marsh released a new project, Rabbit in the Snare, with indie rapper Ivan Ives under the moniker The Lulls in Traffic. Ives is a Los Angeles-based rapper born in Russia but emigrated to the US at a young age. His solo music incorporates classical music, traditional Russian music, and the Russian language, making for a unique hip hop sound. Rabbit in the Snare, though, sounds more similar to Copeland, particularly serving as a transitional album between Ixora and Blushing. Prior to Rabbit, Copeland had flirted with darker electronic music on Eat, Sleep, Repeat. Marsh would include explicit lyrics on Copeland's 2019 album, but Ives' lines on the final track, "The Rope to Pull Yourself Together" were off-brand for Copeland at the time. The dark indie electronic sounds of Copeland-like melodies on Rabbit with the spoken word rap on the record doesn't make for very active music, but it will steal the show if left as ambient music for coffee-shop listening.
WHEN THE NIGHT FALLS, YOU’LL COME BACK TO ME. I need you, but you strangle me. When you go, I miss the tightness. Maybe I'm the one who's in the wrong? "Winding Ivy" throws the listener into the middle of toxic relationship. Beginning with the dissonance of feedback from electronic instruments playing a chord that sounds intensely desperate, the song quickly resolves into melancholy piano, laying the template for Ivan Ives' rapping that sounds more like reading a story book or a letter to lover. The picture we get from Ives' rapping and Marsh's singing is a co- dependence between the "ivy" and the speaker, whom the ivy wraps itself around. The imagery leads listeners to visualize a place where ivy has overgrown the garden it was intended to decorate. When the ivy overtakes the garden, it blocks the sunlight when it grows up. It covers the patio furniture and strangles the gnomes. The garden tools can't be found, and who knows what's living among the ivy? Maintaining the beautiful lawn takes effort. The ivy must be kept in place, otherwise it renders your backyard useless. But take too much control--spread the Roundup too liberally, the beautiful ivy will die. Gardening is hard work. What a metaphor.
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