Premiere: Phourist & the Photons Deliver in Full Gear on “Tired of My Medication”

Phourist & the Photons yearn for change and companionship on “Tired of My Medication”

Listen: “Tired of my Medication” – Phourist & the Photons

It’s time for a change. That’s the essential message that can be drawn from “Tired of my Medication,” a recently-released single by indie rock band, Phourist & the Photons, now streaming exclusively on Atwood Magazine.

Phourist and the Photons - Tired of my Medication Single Art — Phourist and the Photons – Tired of my Medication Single Art

Perhaps this general sentiment can be extended to the group themselves: after several years of floating around the local rock scene in their native Louisville, Kentucky, the time may have come to move on to bigger, better things. Who knows where “Tired of my Medication,” and its accompanying record, We’re All Born Screaming, may take them in that regard.

Phourist & the Photons emerged in 2012 as a solo project conceived by Nick Phourist Hill (whose middle name serves as his pseudonym), who eventually decided “the more, the mightier,” and recruited several other musicians to come along with him. Critics have appreciated how this creation expansion allowed Phourist “to create a larger sound; a theatrical, melodic, yet stripped-down affair, experimenting with neo-classical themes tinged with rock.”

2015’s In Infinite Indigo was hailed as “a firey and thrilling lift-off,” and several of the debut record’s eight tracks, including “Here’s Some Moonlight for Your Day,” made their way onto local radio in Louisville. The follow-up, We’re All Born Screaming (out August 2, 2019), represents a major creative stride for the group. After having added and subtracted a number of bandmates in recent years, the upcoming release “represents the first album of the band’s écurrent and stable lineup”– Phourist, bassist Justin Perez, guitarist Andrew Critchelow, and drummer Scott Boice.

Phourist and the Photons © Phourist and the Photons 2019

Some personal troubles have fueled the content of We’re All Born Screaming— most of all the recent death in the family Phourist has experienced– but “Tired of my Medication” exemplifies the therapeutic value of songwriting. “I remember writing this song with kinda what felt like my last breath of the moment,” he explains. “It was a gloomy day (which has a real beauty to it) and my whole self was flooded with this overwhelming “feeling,” which I couldn’t even begin to describe with words, so I worked through it on my piano. Like therapy or something. Perhaps other folks can relate to the feeling when they hear/feel it. It’s that old cliché: a whole song that pretty much completely spewed out in like 5-10 minutes!”

“Tired of my Medication” achieves a hypnotic effect through the echoes applied to Phourist’s melodic wailing, as the lyrics lay bare his longing for companionship:

Black belly of cloud, belly of rain
I’m under your spell, I’m feelin’ your pain
If you know what I mean,
you know what I’m sayin’
Then sing it with me,
it’s better than prayin’

The song hits a crescendo about two-and-a-half minutes in as the singer’s voice picks up and the piano playing, already quite forceful, noticeably intensifies. From there on, Phourist’s lyricism only gets more esoteric: “Oh alien light from miles away, remindin’ me how the memory stays, you’re out there somewhere just Dragon slayin.’” Lines of such a nature live up to the group’s own description as “a band you can decidedly not pigeonhole; a fresh respite from those unwilling to step outside the the boxes they’ve designed for themselves.”

When it all comes to a close moments later, Phourist has achieved a single in which his multiple talents as a musician and rich vocalist have collided in stirring fashion. The casual listener will quickly come to side with the band as they prepare for their seven-date tour and release of their new full-length album in the coming months. Phourist & the Photons’ We’re All Born Screaming is out August 2nd!