“I’m just hoping for a little change,” sings Mitch Currie before comparing his current situation to a knife in his neck. It’s a pretty passive response to such a dire complaint but considering that Currie, like the rest of us, is suffering from an acute case of languishing, pacing has turned into a major theme. Currie’s latest single, “Knife in my Neck,” is an expression of his frustrations at having his life stalled, just at the point when it was about to take off.
Currie explains that he wrote “Knife In My Neck” just as the first Covid lockdown was setting in. It also just happened to coincide with Currie’s graduation from the Music Arts program at NSCC and slightly before he began looking for jobs or mentorship opportunities. Needless to say, it put a bit of a wrench in his plans.
“Every door that was seemingly open became shut,” says Currie. “Living at home without a job at twenty-five is both humbling and humiliating. ‘Knife in my Neck’ was my means of sorting through this frustration and asking myself if any of this matters. I understand now that this anxiety was not unique to me, and that every artist, small business, every new graduate trying to find their way was crushed in the same way.
“Basically, the song is about being tired of being static and not being able to move forward which is something I think we all relate to. […] Everything sucks right now and you have to learn to laugh at it rather than dwell on impossible solutions.”
The silver lining: we don’t hear from Currie or his band, Sleepy Kicks, all that often. “Knife in my Neck” is Currie’s first release since his 2020 solo single, the super-syllabic “Shininin’.” Hopefully, that’s an indicator that Currie will be using more of this time to turn out music on his own.