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ABOUT MAD HONEY:
Our connections with those around us are inherently transient, yet we often find ourselves defined by them. And if we find ourselves defined by these connections, what are we left with when they inevitably come to an end? This is arguably the central question of Bridge Over Cumberland, which marks a bold step forward for Mad Honey, as the Oklahoma City band’s second full-length release on Deathwish Inc. and Sunday Drive Records is confident, assured, and undoubtedly their most complete work to date.
Debuting in 2018, Mad Honey quickly became one of the buzziest acts in the prolific OKC shoegaze scene, with lead vocalist Tuff Sutcliffe’s poignant lyricism serving as an enigmatic centerpiece. For this album, the band’s most collaborative effort yet, the production allows Sutcliffe’s shadowy presence to stand tall against a backdrop of billowing guitars. The eleven tracks unfold as a series of snapshots tracing the silhouettes of heartaches both platonic and romantic, both quotidian and cosmic.
The intrinsic tension of codependency is explored in the couplet of “Somehow” and “Past Together Isn’t Presence”, as the former opens with Sutcliffe sardonically lamenting “the way that I miss him, I should be put down” while in the latter, the other party is the one who is pining. Anyone who has dealt with the ending stages of a fading friendship or a moribund romance will find something to relate to here, whether it’s the curse of inauspicious timing and the ground that the connection was built on seemingly shifting underneath your feet in the propulsive “James Gets His Rose” or “Moshfeghian” examining the question of whether it’s possible for anyone to win in these situations against the backdrop of a dooming, droning guitar riff. From the opening track “I Am a Wall, I Am a House”, there’s a recurring motif of exploring our connections through the structures we inhabit.
These structures often stand tall across multiple generations, persisting well beyond the fleeting lives of the people who have built and occupied them. How many breakups have the walls of our houses seen over the years? How many failed talking stages have left people curled up on the floors of their apartments? How long does a trace of a former friend’s presence linger in the fabric of your curtains after they’ve left your place for the last time? Do these structures judge us on how long we take to pick up the pieces of our lives and find ourselves once again in the aftermath of losing someone who served as a prism through which we viewed the world and our place in it?
This all culminates in the towering title track to close out the album, which surely stands as Mad Honey’s most notable achievement thus far. In it, we survey the waning embers of a fire that once burned bright. The bed is greening over. Sutcliffe is burning every bridge, but keeping the ordinary, pedestrian moments which ultimately define our lives. She’s pondering whether her dreams lie in the Tennessee hills where she grew up, rather than the Oklahoma plains where she currently resides. By the time a gentle piano denouement carries us to the conclusion of the song cycle, we’re left with the sense that despite Sutcliffe so often finding herself unmoored and dealing with all of how deep feelings seemingly define us and threaten to destroy us when an important interpersonal dynamic comes to its inescapable conclusion, there’s ultimately a quiet conviction that all of this emotional pain can eventually result in hard-won growth.
Bridge Over Cumberland, therefore, suggests that if you define yourself by these connections, what you are left with when they come to their inevitable end is a crossroads, both a risk of self-destruction and an opportunity for reinvention. It’s a tense, nervy conclusion, but also an empowering one. And given the accomplishment that this album represents, we can find solace in the fact that this time, reinvention has won out.
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