Jessica Genius sets the stage for us at the beginning of “You Don’t Belong Here” with the sound of the street outside a mall shop window before a minimal, effervescent synth stream accompanies the words of a guy who imagines himself falling in love with someone in the window who he’s never spoken to but, in typical creep fashion, projects a whole romance behind that momentary, yet obsessive, attraction. The line “You don’t belong here, neither do I” offers a peek into the depths of the delusional projection. Halfway through the song it turns from ethereal pop song to something with wilder beats and dynamics like the synth funk soundtrack to a scene in which the creep and the object of his obsession are entwined in scenarios you’d see in a typical romantic comedy of the montage of dates and activities, dancing. But the warped fantasy fades out without a return to the glimmering, misty-eyed infatuation from the first part of the song. What happened? Did the creep get caught and hauled off, slapped with a restraining order? Hit by a bus? Is this the first part of a larger narrative? One can only speculate but the dual sides of the song provide an interesting and unconventional structural and tonal contrast. Listen to “You Don’t Belong Here” on Soundcloud.
Queen City Sounds and Art 
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