The people that spring out of the songs of Los Angeles band White Arrows don't seem to have much going for them. It's not that they're beside themselves with melancholy - for the breezy music wouldn't support such a claim - but they've got dark, storm clouds following them around. Lead singer Mickey Church gives us these stories of those people who are finding themselves smothered under the waves. They're looking out with blank gazes, some of them, and they're looking for relief. Bukowski wrote in "On A Night You Don't Sleep":
"The sound of the song twisted
In the air and everything was empty and dry and easy
And I got into my car and drove back to the hot city
But I knew I would always remember the time
And the catch of it - the way the night hung undisturbed
With people walking on it like some quiet rug
And a small boat rocking bravely by bulldogging water
And the colored pier lights like a broken mind
Sick in the sea."
It's those thoughts of returning to a hot city and of a broken mind that's sick in the sea that strike as maybe similar ones to the makings of White Arrows songs, where the people are in slightly rugged shape, but they're able to still take on the waves and feel the undulating current as an accomplice, not an enemy. Everything's still empty and dry, but those feelings of being missing, of not returning and of getting killed over and over again can be mere translations, necessary coping mechanisms.