In a span of two years, Girish & The Chronicles have modeled themselves into quite a group of rock impresarios.
Besides having played and copped their share of prizes at numerous college festivals since their inception, Girish & The Chronicles have more so become the benchmark for rock music in the country.
A lot of this came about with their appearance at Suncane Skale Music Festival in Montenegro in 2010, becoming one of the few Indian independent bands to make headway into the global music conscience with their song, “The Yester Years” also featured on the festival compilation.
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International exposure aside, even the national telecasting of their gig at Rabindra Bhavan in Guwahati in 2010 was quite a novelty back when it happened – a privilege we don’t normally accord to independent musicians in this country.
Therefore, their newest single, A New Beginning, comes through with a lot of attendant hopes and expectations. And these guys from Gangtok seem to have stuck to a plan, right from the word go. We all know what Girish Pradhan’s voice can do, but the metaphors in this song run much deeper and wider.
The streaming political consciousness could be attributed to the band’s roots in one of India’s most restive regions; the words, though, come from the soul. So do the simple chord progressions, which envelop them and the montage of human trials that make the music video, and bring them all together as a single prayer.
Could it have been better? Well, you wouldn’t know really, and at a point, somewhere between hearing those words and aligning them to the incongruities of your own human experience, it’s a powerful emotion and that’s just enough.
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