Photo Credit: Celyn Morris (@celmorris)
By Alissa Arunarsirakul // October 25, 2021
Although Wil Owen only has a few releases to his name, he’s easily becoming one of our favorite Bristol songwriters. A true storyteller at heart, Owen lets us know exactly how in tune he is with his emotions, which we can certainly appreciate. With just an acoustic guitar, Owen leaves us absolutely stunned in his soul stirring new single, “After Dark.”
On “After Dark,” Wil Owen explained,
“‘After Dark’ is a song that started out as an image: a crowd of people in a room, completely isolated from each other. I was thinking a lot about our inner lives, how we’re so absorbed by our own thoughts that we sometimes obfuscate our responsibility for them. That’s a hard line to navigate.”
A perfect soundtrack to an incessantly rainy day, “After Dark” is solemn, heartfelt, and exactly what you need to hear if a therapy session isn’t enough to ease your mind. While some people may be afraid of getting vulnerable, Owen reveals that all of us could benefit from being honest with our struggles and desires. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and shut your eyes while soaking in Owen’s excruciatingly eye-opening lyricism.
“The song is essentially an inner monologue, a stream of consciousness reaction to all the shit we say when we’re sad and loose and feeling vulnerable. It ends up affording a moment of reflection, of honesty.”
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