B-Side Guys

If you find yourself perpetually perplexed by the befuddlements of the human experience, allow Missouri’s Surtsey to be your sage guide through the tangled thickets of life’s endless challenges. On their latest single “Knot to Force,” the indie Americana outfit weaves a richly textured tapestry of folk-inflected roots-rock that doubles as a meditation on the universal struggle to find peace amidst the chaos.

As the song’s backstory elucidates, “Knot to Force” blends the timeless traditions of folk and country with a distinct “indie twang” that channels the spirit of alt-country trailblazers like Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt. But there’s an elevated, almost jam-band sensibility to Surtsey’s approach, the track’s swaying rhythms and rippling electric guitar lines evoking the cosmic ruminations of My Morning Jacket at their most transcendent.

Lyrically, the song is a poetic rumination on the act of simply enduring – of weathering life’s unending curveballs and coming out the other side, if not quite unscathed, then at least with one’s sense of existential purpose intact. “If you force the lock you’re gonna break the key/I don’t mind the work tell my hands don’t bleed,” singer Joseph Bassa muses, his world-weary timber conveying a hard-earned wisdom.

Yet for all its meditative introspection, “Knot to Force” never sinks into self-pity or defeatism. There’s an underlying current of resilience and hope that permeates the track, a reminder that even amidst the “disenfranchised grief & death” of the modern condition, we’re all fundamentally “in God’s teeth” and “the same.” Bassa and his bandmates may be wrestling with life’s thorniest quandaries, but they do so with a sense of grounded perspective and (to borrow a delightfully evocative phrase from the song’s backstory) a “dovetailed vision with a bottle of beast.”

In the end, “Knot to Force” succeeds as both a richly atmospheric roots-rock odyssey and a poignant commentary on the human experience. Surtsey may not have all the answers, but they’ve certainly mastered the art of channeling our collective bewilderment into something approaching transcendent. So the next time you find yourself hopelessly knotted up over life’s persistent enigmas, just queue up this soothing slice of “y’allternative” catharsis and let the “ocean sway with the sand slowly” – perhaps even with a bottle of “beast” in hand, for good measure.