SONNY FALLS – “GOING NOWHERE”
A SPILL EXCLUSIVE MUSIC PREMIERE
As Sonny Falls, Ryan Ensley makes rollicking and resonant rock songs that feel like self-contained journeys. The Chicago bandleader combines breezy, timeless songwriting with a bracing emotional potency that sneaks up on you. There are ample power pop hooks, driving riffs, and a consistently tasteful sensibility in these tunes that heβs been honing across four sprawling albums. His latest, Sonny Falls, feels like a new era for Ensley: not for any drastic sonic reinvention but for the fact that he took his time and didnβt rush himself for the first time in his career. The resulting 11 tracks on this album are his most cohesive, engaging, and immediate yet: a testament to Ensleyβs patience and maturity as a songwriter.
Sonny Falls is an album about taking stock of your own, peeling back from the surrounding pressures, and figuring out who you are. βGoing Nowhereβ best captures these questions. Itβs a bruising rocker that grapples with being a musician. He sings, βIt was summer in Manhattan / Touring on a record we made in / A Pilsen basement / Aimless ambition / I wonder if Iβm going nowhere I heard that place is kinda cool.β The track is the emotional centerpiece of the record and thanks to Ensleyβs band firing on all cylinders also its most potent offering. βThere just comes a point where you try and see what you’ve accomplished and you wonder whether or not what you’re doing makes sense,β says Ensley. βThere’s a lot about pursuing music as a career that doesnβt make sense but Iβve recognized thereβs no other options that make sense in other directions either. So, at this point itβs really not even my decision anymore, itβs just what I gotta do.β
ARTIST QUOTE
βGoing nowhere is about trying to reconcile the difference between where youβre at and where you want to be, while also recognizing you may be exactly where you should be. For me, thereβs always been a feeling of perpetual restlessness and with this song Iβm trying to tell myself that living in the moment is the only option. Once in the moment, though, Iβm confronted with the subconscious realities of where the restlessness comes from, and itβs up to me to pinpoint them in order to find peace. Thereβs nowhere left to go β I have to go nowhere, and in that stillness I can move forward.β
Sonny Falls
Sonny Falls
(Earth Libraries)
Release Date: March 1, 2024
ArtistΒ Links
Background Photo Credit: Emma Bilyeu
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