Listening to Social Gravy and their latest single, “Rapture and Rupture,” is an experience akin to watching a high-speed collision in reverse where the shrapnel defies gravity to form something whole, beautiful, and startlingly resilient. The Los Angeles duo, comprised of Brad Kohn and Vee Bordukov, constructs a sonic landscape here that feels less like a song and more like a fever breaking.
The track opens with an arpeggiated string pattern that loops in the lower-mid register. It is hypnotic, clean, and oddly specific it reminds me of the way dust motes dance in a beam of light in an empty attic, that quiet suspension of time before someone stomps on the floorboards. There is a fragility here, a sense of solitary introspection that hangs heavy in the air.
But Social Gravy doesn’t let us linger in the quiet. They call themselves “romantic rock’n’rollers,” and you can feel the sweat and intent behind that label as the song evolves. The shift is geological. What starts as an indie folk mumble grows a rhythmic pulse, swelling until it bursts into a thick, distorted wall-of-sound. It creates a legitimate sense of catharsis, mimicking that specific, terrifying rush of adrenaline you get when you finally say the thing you’ve been holding back for months.
The music captures the oscillation between friction and desire perfectly. It smells faintly of ozone that electrical scent right before a thunderstorm cracks a summer heatwave. By the time the crashing percussion and harmonic layers take over, the track has transformed from a tentative question into a chaotic, anthem-like answer. It asserts the self against the silence.
Do we actually need the ruin to appreciate the recovery, or is the noise just a way to prove we’re still here?
