You won’t forget the first time you heard Forever Like Red. It will be on a day such as this when nothing feels right and it seems like as good an idea as any to fill the silence with reason. Songs very rarely make you stand up and sing but Exit Signs and Dream On and What Will You Pay and Breakdown just might. And you could stand here all day and say that Forever Like Red sound like this and Forever Like Red sound like that but it wouldn’t get you anywhere – you’d still be standing up and singing.
Forever Like Red is Cameron Meshell (voice, guitar, piano), Pelle Hillstrom (guitars, effects), Mikkel Heimburger (bass) and Jesper Kristensen (drums). This line up came together in London at the start of 2006 but prior to that Danish born Mikkel and Jesper were in the LA-based Citrus whilst Swedish-born Pelle featured in electropop outfit Modwheelmood. Cameron hails from Shreveport, Louisiana but coincidentally all four had spent time in LA before individually heading over to the UK. Cameron knew of Pelle anyway and called him up, asking if he would like to hear some songs. Pelle agreed and what he heard blew him away, those songs forming the basis of what you are going to know and love as Forever Like Red.
Pelle co-wrote What Will You Pay, Inhibitions and Off You Go but the vast majority of Forever Like Red material has been penned by Cameron himself. Unquestionably a star in the shadows, Cameron is the product of a traditional Deep South God-fearing upbringing, a fact that may be apparent once you hear What Will You Pay. Essentially an agnostic take on the contradictions inherent in a belief in any after-life, Cameron admits to hiding this song from his fervently religious mother lest she be offended. “She follows the word”, he says with a look that suggests we’ll all know what that means. Other songs are more clear-cut although similarly addictive: Inhibitions is about Doing Anything You Wanna Do, Dream On is about a couple changing and growing apart – together - “the words of love you flew to me on paper planes”; and Exit Signs is a rites of passage song about not wanting to make a commitment.
Straightforward enough you might think but then you’d hear Father and Forever Like Red and you’d have to think again. Written as a result of a catastrophic event in Cameron’s life that took place in August 2000, both these songs showcase Forever Like Red’s darker, heavier side: Father is pure caterwaul emotion whilst Forever Like Red itself is an epiphany of sorts, all pent up anger and fear in music. Of this song, Cameron will only say “I hope people will make sense of the lyrics and connect with them” but reveals further that “Forever Like Red is an attempt to describe a life-changing moment that remains frozen in time,” he pauses, “forever like red.”
Forever Like Red’s debut album is called Distance and Cameron explains the title away by suggesting that much of the album’s content concerns a long distance relationship he was conducting whilst recording the album – although it also refers to the distance in time since he started writing some of the songs thereon. On the title track he sings ‘I will write a letter to you on your birthday” but admits that he never got round to writing or sending such a letter and that maybe the album is just his attempt at doing so. The love song itself is often seen as some kind of secular requiem anyway but on Distance, Forever Like Red appear to have elevated it to some kind of new art form. My guess is you are going to love it.
Is this the end of FLR? =[ Sad to see it go, this was one of my favorite bands. Well, there must be some good reason. I hope someday you'll return, as FLR, or something new, even!
Love your music, particularly Father! Found you guys while looking at bands related to Modwheelmood... And I've found some pretty cool stuff! (You guys and Once, notably)
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