first, listen to the song:
Collect the song here, only 9 left as of this writing.
Clear eyes is an open container, shapeshifting to match and elevate the mood of whoever is filling in as his temporary counterpart. For “Keep Me In Mind”, Clear Eyes goes into a minimalistic, at times monotone, vibe to enhance Lyrah’s nostalgic presence and put you in a rainy day daze. Let’s dive in.
The song kicks off innocently, with crisp arpeggiated high synth notes that feel like waking up. In the background, what feels like an elongated whisper every 8th beat creates space and acts as an indication of the echo-led song that is to come. As the high-pitched kick-less muted beat kicks in, the synth intertwines with the beat pads to form an airy foundation, and the song’s canvas expands with notes and beats getting panned from left to right. Lyrah’s visual lyrics paint a picture of the nostalgia of being rained-in and reminiscing about lost love. Her voice is augmented by well-produced echos, reverbs, and cuts that, together with a purposely off-beat bass and some added background sonic landscapes, culminate the connection of the music with the song’s meaning. What is it about the rain that makes us want to escape inwards into what ifs?
As we we go into the pre-chorus, the prolonged F# minor chord, the disappearance of the synth and drums, and the addition of more echoed waves create a flashback into Lyrah’s memories of being with her now distanced love. The waves get choppier, the pads start coming back into the song’s only noticeable crescendo, and then it all cuts out as we are left with Lyrah’s powerful isolated chorus punchline “keep me in mind when your lost”, repeated over echoes and smart cuts over the same 1-4-5 (E-B-A) Postal-Service-like sound from the verses. The rest of the song follows the same pattern, at times becoming tedious and over-echoed, losing the battle of wanting to keep you in the rainy trance. The second chorus brings in Lyrah’s beautiful threaded melodic voice lines, which continue all the way to the end and fall just short of giving us something to remember this song by, or keep it in mind. It’s almost there.
Clear Eyes (Jeremy Lloyd of Marian Hill’s solo project) and Lyrah (Kathleen Warner, a retired tech product designer turned full-time artist) find themselves at the center of the onchain music movement. Getting their start by making music for others before releasing their own solo projects, both of them had their first onchain drop a month apart in early 2022, back when a Sound drops was the hardest thing to get into in the middle of a bull run and we would FOMO into paying 0.1 ETH for a 1/25 edition. Those were the days. While their careers go back years before their web3 debut, with Clear Eyes starting with Marian Hill since 2015 and Lyrah having her first hit in 2019 with “Down Low”, both seem to have embraced onchain music as a path to creative freedom and financial sustainability.
Great artists push boundaries, and these two are no exception. Clear Eyes is constantly experimenting as a core member of LNRZ, a web3 distribution community, recently driving ~3100 mints to Marian Hill’s song “Everytime” as a part of Coinbase’s Onchain Summer. Lyrah dropped “Drain My Bank Account”, where she appropriately distributed all of the proceeds (in this case ~$1,200) between the song’s top collector, golden egg winner, top curator and top tweeter.
Given how much intention both of them have put into some of their past releases, part of the average score given to “Keep Me In Mind” here is due to the seeming lack of intention or innovation in this release. We, as onchain collectors, are still figuring out why we collect. One thing we can know for certain is that collectibles have more emotional and financial value when there is something exciting, new and historically important about them. On the other hand, we also know that having direct contact with fans allows artists to skip part of the bureacracy, over-producing, and scheduling of releases and “just mint it”. According to its Sound description, this song was created in a day where Clear Eyes and Lyrah met in person for the first time. They made a good song, minted it and have so far almost minted out to make ~$800. And in here lies one of the tensions of releasing onchain music. Artists need to balance the ability to go straight to their fanbase with the necessity to imbue meaning into bigger projects to make their art valuable to own and worth collecting.
Should artists be releasing after getting to a good-enough point in production? Does every onchain drop need to have a bigger story, an incentive innovation or a deeper meaning behind it? Is it ok to release just to release so collectors can keep artists in their minds? There is probably no right answer, and every artist should be asking themselves these questions to figure out their own their own balance and what works with their fan base.
“Keep Me In Mind” is a solid song and we enjoyed listening to it over and over, but, as much as we tried, we couldn’t find anything that makes it stand out. Ultimately, it is not clear to us what the value of collecting “Keep Me In Mind” would be beyond financially supporting the artists and being able to have it in your collection. This is also neither of Clear Eyes’ or Lyrah’s best work, both of whom we consider to be excellent at their craft and only getting better. Listen to “Heaven” (ft. Reo Cragun) for a favorite Clear eyes of ours, where he showcases more of his instrumental chops, or to “In The Leaves” for a Lyrah favorite. Although we were expecting more from the combination of these two talented artists, we hope that this is just the start of their collaboration and we are excited to hear and experience what they come up with next.
More on the song:
Date of mint: August 23rd, 2023
Mint details: 0.01 ETH, 41 mints (fixed edition out of 50, still minting as of this writing)
Current price: 0.01 ETH (collect here)
musicurator