Green Cheek Beak Captures the Haze of Sleeplessness in New Single "Up All Night"

One of my favorite feelings that I don’t get to experience as much these days is the late-night confusion and euphoria of a brain still at work in the wee hours of the morning. Life feels more fluid, time gets iffy, and thoughts flutter in and out like little whispers. These sensations both color the tones of Green Cheek Beak’s newest single, as well as find themselves captured in its lyrics.

The jittering electric piano that welcomes the listener in is reminiscent of those flickers of thoughts that make their way in and out of the brain, echoed by the wash of a sleepy vocalise. This curtain of filtered voice is broken through by Green Cheek Beak’s lyrics, expressing the confusion and haziness of a sleepless night with “a host of regrets/ I created in my head.” The melancholy of the lyrics offsets the calming ebb and flow of the track, but soon fall away to let forth a soothing interplay of synthesizer and guitar.

“”Up All Night” was originally an odd little chord melody guitar arrangement that I had recorded, left, and grown to hate. I was messing around in Ableton and ended up slicing that chord melody to MIDI to create the main riff of the song!” – Green Cheek Beak

We return to a refrain of the lyrics and affected vocalise before ending on the calming sound of moving water. The song overall feels like an experiment in capturing a state of mind, its movements taking us there both literally and impressionistically, and delivering the listener somewhere both familiar and strange, not unlike those witching hours that wait for us all.