His seventh album, It’s Not Going To Be Okay, was recorded by Joshua Burnside after the death of his best friend. And the ten songs by the songwriter, born in 1989, revolve precisely around that grief. With absolute clarity. »Grief has always been a big part of my music,« Burnside explains. »It was through grief that I began writing songs as a teenager.«
Compared with his previous work, this album is marked by the personal impact and unsparing directness with which Burnside wrote these lyrics. This is not about grand metaphors. His lines feel like notes. Observations of feeling made on himself. »It’s a short walk from my house to yours. It’s the sound, of the snare you used to play. You used to drum on your knees in school all day.« Burnside delivers such lines in minimally melodic song, framed by a sparse production.
Burnside locates his sound on the threshold between abstraction and reality in a way few songwriters manage. Rarely has an album captured grief so precisely, so plainly. Songs such as »Something Else« are torn apart by pain – without any pathos. With each listen, this music moves closer, touches more deeply, makes clear what the end of a life means: afterwards, it will not be okay. Yet from this deep grief, moving music can still be made.
