In a transient, college-based city like Boston and a regional scene like ours, there’s always different sounds and styles bubbling up in various corners. So it’s impossible to say there’s any type of movement or pattern developing in any one aspect of the area’s music scene. But there’s been a bit of a groundswell lately for organic pop music, with artists and bands like Jenna Lotti, Amy & The Engine, Will Dailey, and M+E delivering catchy, impassioned singles that don’t share DNA with most of the glossy bullshit currently dominating Top 40 radio.
Another new entry into that mix is singer-songwriter Chris Moreno, who on Saturday (July 30) plays the Middle East in Cambridge. This fall, Moreno releases his latest record, All I Need, produced and recorded by David Minehan at Woolly Mammoth Sound in Waltham, and today Vanyaland premieres the video for its first single, the anthemic “Finally Free”.
The track wouldn’t sound out of place before or after Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song”, and Moreno says it carries the same message of empowerment. It’s all about facing the hard truths in life.
“This song for me is a very personal one, and I wrote it about a difficult period of my life that I went through several years ago,” he tells Vanyaland. “As a long-term relationship came to an end, I began to question who I was and what I wanted. On the outside it seemed I had everything together, but on the inside I was struggling to find my identity and a sense of purpose. It became evident to me I wasn’t living up to my full potential. For the first time in six years, I felt completely alone, and it forced me to take a serious look in the mirror. On the path of self-discovery I learned things about myself I didn’t know and I remembered things about myself that I had forgotten. Perhaps most importantly, I made the fateful decision to begin playing music again after several years without it.”
For the Ken Schmidt-directed video, Moreno wanted to represent a different type of freedom.
“Instead of focusing solely on a relationship or breakup, I wanted to create a video that left room for audience interpretation,” Moreno says. “The video features a girl who is unhappy with her present situation and spends her time daydreaming about being somewhere else. This ‘longing to escape’ is a prevalent theme throughout the video, leading to the culmination of events — when she finally finds the nerve to get up and leave. [It’s] symbolic of what the song represents.”
Moreno will find himself “Finally Free” once again later this year, when he sets off for a tour of the Northeast in support of the new record. In the meantime, watch his video below.