A new single by a pair of Scottish expat musicians looks at how friends can comfort someone going through grief, which could also apply to Third Culture Kids (TCKs) mourning the place and people they just left.
The Leaving is a new band formed by Martin Doherty and Jonny Scott, longtime friends, collaborators and Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.A.-based expats of the Glaswegian music scene. They formerly collaborated as multi-instrumentalists, songwriters and producers with CHVRCHES, The Twilight Sad, Aerogramme, Mogwai and Idlewild, amongst others.
Born from a period of deep personal upheaval and creative rediscovery, The Leaving present an unfiltered body of music forged in grief, rebuilt through friendship and electrified by an instinctive alchemy that comes from a decades-long kinship and connection.
“‘Pray’ is rooted in a conversation about what is left when someone is gone,” says Doherty. “To be a source of comfort for a person you care about deeply in their time of greatest need, even though you do not feel qualified or capable. It’s about becoming stronger in remembrance of them, and that which was the source of your deepest sadness, becoming your greatest strength.”
Here’s an excerpt from the song’s lyrics:
when i miss you the most
i see your face in a ghost
you fade to me
levitate
take me now
to a place so loud
i can drown them out of me
dance with me in a lucid dream
no reality could set u free.
Oh my friend
can you help me now
Comfort me
when there’s no way out
pull me close
when there’s nothing left to say
Oh my brother
we are so damned
tell me the truth
i will understand
if you don’t believe in a god
what does that say?
do you still pray?
‘Pray’ is rooted in a conversation about what is left when someone is gone.
Check out the song below, and follow The Leaving on Instagram.
