“The Fruit” by Toronto’s Jazz Funeral Tells a Dark Tale of Why We Desire What We Do

JazzFuneral4 — Jazz Funeral, photo courtesy the artists

What you’re about to read shouldn’t make sense but listening to Jazz Funeral’s “The Fruit” brought to mind the video for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” The pacing, the visual mood of the video. Like an alternative soundtrack to the 80s pop classic. Except that Toronto’s Jazz Funeral, musically, is more like Floodland period The Sisters of Mercy, like “Colours” and “Neverland.” The brooding melody and distorted synths, the low bass drone, the flares of tone that linger and flicker away. But Jazz Funeral’s sonic character is a little brighter while the subject matter of the song hits at the more personal and mythological. Words of the narrator’s “body breaking all the time” and of “noises heard down the block” and of escape by necessity or inclination. With the lyrics “what’s it worth to you, you know you don’t really get to choose the fruit” one can take away many things in the context of the rest of the song but one interpretation is the critical pedagogy view of education in that we go through life thinking we know what we want and what we need but we’ve all been conditioned and often our desires are shaped by outside forces internalized and until we become aware of this fact and learn to deconstruct these seemingly instinctual sides of our personality for what they are we will never be in control of our own lives from base impulses of desire and our aspirations when our dreams and psyche have been colonized and warped to serve a purpose that might even be detrimental to us and has been driving our entire lives in ways we wouldn’t choose to if we were fully conscious of what’s been going on in our heads. Do we really want what we think we want and why do we want those things? “The Fruit” dares to question such a fundamental side of our personalities. The song can also be enjoyed as simply a powerful and engrossing neo-darkwave track about fractious relationships but its composition and lyrics suggest a depth, intellect and soul searching that is rare in popular music. The group recently released its new EP The Fruit. Listen to “The Fruit” on Soundcloud and follow Jazz Funeral at any of the links below.