Tom Woodward’s latest single “PHONEY MESSIAH” doesn’t so much enter the building as crash in with the urgency of an alarm siren. The track is tense and swirling, based around a driving rhythmic throb and a cloud of fuzzed out guitars that suck you into its unsettling atmosphere right away. There’s no mistaking from the first note that Woodward has no intention of soothing listeners here, he’d rather slap them away.
What makes the song so intriguing, though, is the way it fuses grunge influence with surrealism and a cutting takedown of contemporary disillusionment. It’s the kind of song that feels like a fun house mirror held up between now and today’s cultural chaos, reflecting back at us the way people seem drawn to easy answers, even if those answers come in wrappers of manipulation. Woodward’s infatuation with grunge imagery gives the track an edgy, raw feel while its surreal qualities turn it into a dream, or is it a nightmare.
Woodward guides listeners through a universe in which strongmen and internet agitators take advantage of our hunger for meaning. The song’s central message is nothing if not blunt and topical, in a loud world saturated with quick fixes, we’re all sold lies of certainty. The video that comes with it only accentuates this, transforming real-world nightmarish imagery into a collage of entertainment and clickbait. This study in avant-garde horror is a metaphor for how the digital era has muddied truth with spectacle and how false prophets thrive on it. “PHONEY MESSIAH” is more than a song, it’s a cutting review cloaked in grunge-drenched ferocity and a reminder that the quest for meaning can be as powerful as it is dangerous.
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