LONDIN THOMPSON EXPERIENCES COGNITIVE DISSONANCE ON "WISH IT WOULD RAIN"

Cleveland singer/songwriter Londin Thompson wishes the weather would match her mood on "I Wish It Would Rain."

Summer 2020 has been one of the strangest seasons in most of our lifetimes. It's so surreal, looking out the window, seeing bright blue skies, gorgeous flowers bursting with life. Our brains seem hardwired to interpret these signals as 'fun in the sun' times, time for beach bods and bikinis and barbecues and road trips and maybe some irresponsible intoxication.

And yet, this year, none of that happened. It still looks like summer outside. But what we're living through is somewhere between a ghost time, a plague zone, and a nightmare dystopia. Frankly, it's depressing. AND disorienting. Much more so than if this was all going on during the spooky skeletal days of late Autumn or the cold, dead void of Winter.

This dichotomy is the subject of "Wish It Would Rain," the newest r&b-tinged pop single from Cleveland, Ohio's Londin Thompson. Thompson uses the setting of a party she doesn't want to be at to explore the strange sensation of being entirely out of alignment with your surroundings.

LONDIN THOMPSON - “WISH IT WOULD RAIN”

Don't worry, though. The somewhat bleak, downcast tone of the subject matter is in no way reflected in the music, which is still a somewhat sunny, bouncy, r&b-tinged Pop track, built around a simple jazzy guitar line and a slight beat on the chorus. It's stripped down to the point of being sparse, and that's actually a good thing. It leaves more room for Thompson's vocals to shine, which is her most striking feature. Her voice is high, clear, and pure, sounding like an innocuous Ariana Grande. In a just world, Londin Thompson would be just as big. That would certainly give us something to smile about over here at We Are: The Guard..

J. Simpson occupies the intersection between criticism, creativity, and academia. Based out of Portland, Or., he is the author of Forestpunk, an online journal/brand studying the traces of horror, supernatural, and the occult through music, fashion and culture. He plays in the dreamfolk band Meta-Pinnacle with his partner Lily H. Valentine, with whom he also co-founded Bitstar Productions, a visual arts collective focused on elevating Pop Culture to High Art.