Photo by Kevin Condon

Brooklyn-based trio Big Bliss make music to not only entertain but to open a window to the state of the world with keen social commentary. With their forthcoming album Vital Return out August 18th, the band have shared their new single ‘A Seat at the Table’.

With various musical styles weaved into the production including post-punk, new wave, and modern indie, ‘A Seat at the Table’ is a social critique of the current generations place in history during the recent years of chaos that have affected us all. While the lyrics may provoke a state of urgency, sonically the track is easing fostering a perfect balance between the groove and the messaging.

In a detailed statement touching on ‘A Seat at the Table’, Tim Race wrote:

“I wrote the lyrics for ‘A Seat at the Table’ on January 6, 2021. I was at home wracked with covid, and so I watched the events of that day alternating between the screen and the steamed towel I needed to help me breathe. Fevered and quarantined during a once-in-a-century-pandemic, I heard a familiar ritual: TV news first broadcast violent chaos, then honed analysis, and in time, a body count.

I was in 5th grade when Columbine happened. My memory of it is eerily familiar: I was home sick from school watching TV when around noon the channel abruptly cut to pictures of kids my older brother’s age splattered with blood, falling half-conscious out of windows to escape. My 7th grade class in Pittsburgh was sent home early because we still did not know the whereabouts of Flight 93 on 9/11.

Every one of my peers shares in a wealth of experiences like these. They are our generation’s “where were you when” moments. Television offered us just enough distance that life appeared able to go on, only with another modicum more generalized mortal fear than the time before.

We went on to be the first generation in American history to do worse than our parents.

We came of age in the dregs of late-stage capitalism. While feckless, cowardly politicians shielded special interests like the gun lobby and broke taxes for the rich; The Supreme Court decided that corporations were people; and the U.S. went into a 20-year unjust, racist war.

Our adulthood arrived to a broken promise — our generation’s seat at society’s table was pulled from under us, leaving us locked in survival-mode by design.

That survival, both individual and collective, physical and economic, is outside of our control. Our greatest threat is being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”