By Deux

As paradoxical as it seems, Faron Sage’s latest single, “No Alternative”, is both dystopian and utopian. It marshals hope and despair at calculated points in the cut. And it leaves you, nearly five minutes after it begins, wallowing in a realm of possibilities and potential, both as negative as Keat’s negative capability, and as brimming as the converse.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Sage is a rapper. He’s certainly not a singer. And, as much as a lyricist as he might be, he doesn’t actually offer up rhymes. You can detect a couple of cadences in his delivery, which sounds like animated talking. But in this respect, as a vocalist, he’s largely in a class that’s his alone.

Nonetheless, with his strong UK accent, the pumping, circa-120 BPM track, and the different phases it goes through, “Alternative” requires some serious listening to catch the man’s words, tenets, and doctrine, if you will. The first verse, leaden with a deep, dark bass groove that repeats each bar and remains sparse over a high hat tinged drum pattern, seemingly summons all (or at least many) of the ills plaguing contemporary society.

Part rambling, part complaining, and part acting as a demagogue, he comes in hard and heavy before brightening things up on the hook. With the sounds of the synth and a vibrating organ adding much needed color, Sage is joined by a female vocalist or two hypnotizing you with the refrain from which the title of the tune was derived.

However, Sage flips the groove two more times before all is said and done. Each time marks a point of departure, if not a significant progression or movement, in the song’s outlook. For the second verse he throws in new drums and more upbeat sounding keyboards while pinpointing, if not solutions, certainly a more optimistic outlook on the social issues for which alternatives seem slim. “If we just release our minds and realize our potential,” he intones at one point, touching on a viable option for any odds just about anyone might be up against.

The sonic sound bed changes again for the last verse, this time with spacey, elongated keyboards and another seriously heavy bass line which, because of how it’s hooked up in the number, sounds just like a cartoon. “We need a system that celebrates the diversity of life,” he concludes and, to his credit, no one dares tell him otherwise.