MY 20 REFLECTION, PERSONAL ESSAY

My 20 Reflection

a personal essay about Vansire and what their song 'Reflection no. 6' means to me

The duo band “Vansire” from Minnesota has been able to become another staple in the genre of dream and bedroom pop. I was introduced to this band from listening to Spotify recommendations that stemmed from my current playlist of indie and bedroom pop music in early 2019. Their music immediately stood out to me having deep reverberated synths, groovy bass line, and low fidelity sound. I listened to much of their second album “Angel Youth” which had a mix of upbeat funk and calming melodies.

Vansire consists of bandmembers Josh Augustin and Sam Winemiller, who had known each other since high school, meeting on a drum line and starting a mutual friendship. Sam had an idea to create music and asked Josh if they wanted to start a band “that sounds like mac (Mac DeMarco).” The first song they produced, “Bridges for the Young,” can be defined as “basement pop” being recorded on a broken iPad in a basement. The band saw success very shortly afterward when their song was played on the local radio that following summer in 2015. Producing their debut album “Reflections and Reveries” over one year from August 2015 to August 2016. Both band members started their first year in college, studying at two different institutions,

Josh in Oberlin, Ohio, and Sam in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After working on and releasing their first EP “The Rolling, Driftless North” in January 2017, it would start the beginning of this duo’s long-distance friendship.

In October 2020, they released their second EP “After Fillmore County” filled with much low-fidelity sound as their previous album, “Angel Youth” released in April 2018. The theme of love and hope is portrayed throughout “After Fillmore County” establishing how Josh and Sam feel about the long-distance while residing and attending college in two different US states. The song “The Latter Teens” imagines a long and fun-filled road trip along Highway 20 with a companion starting from Massachusetts through “the driftless zone” of southeastern Minnesota, eventually ending up at the pacific northwest shoreline. Additionally, other lyrics in the song “We'd be quintessential leads, who found love in the latter teens, I guess we'll wait and see” suggest that the band members found each other near the end of their teenage years, grew attached, and now must wait more time to be together until they graduate college. Josh reminisces on the song “Every Time Around” recounting when he met Sam and memories he has with him, but recently feels lonely without him and better with his presence. Despite the shortcomings from their studies, according to a studio tour video with Josh, he explains this will most likely be the last EP released before they graduate college in December 2020.

Upon discovering this new EP in January 2021, the song that stood out to me was “Reflection No. 6”. While more heavily instrumental and slow-moving compared to the other songs on the EP, something about the opening and midway transition always made me feel a different way. The song doesn’t feature a lot of vocals, however heavily reverberated, almost buried underneath the dreamy sounds of synths and guitar. It would sound like the narrator is saying that the time spent imagining a joyful scenario can’t last forever and eventually you will come back and face reality. While you may be uncomfortable in your current situation, you can learn to accept things for how they are and hope for the better. This might refer to the long-distance that’s between Josh and Sam, and how they will soon be together, but in the meantime, Josh is “staring at the fields” in rural Ohio. I’d chosen this song to describe how I felt near the end of my senior year of high school. The strings and piano at the beginning feel like the start of a dream, then when the guitar and kick drum come in sounds like the start of memories recalling within the short duration left of the song. During my senior year, there weren’t many opportunities to spend time with my friends due to the coronavirus. This paired with the fact that I had chosen to go to school far away meant there was little time left together. The experiences and moments I did get to enjoy are what I remember while listening to this song. I might not share the hardships of long-distance love that Josh and Sam express in their album, but I can say I miss my fiends and family after being gone for just a few weeks.

The term “Rolling, Driftless north” is used to identify the multi-state region of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois