Listening to Weston Day release “Storms” feels a bit like opening a window during a gale just to see if the glass will hold. It’s a rush of air, sudden and brisk. While his style is often bookmarked as “Elvis Costello meets Paul Simon,” I hear a man frantically trying to explain a complicated heartbreak before the bar closes.
Armed with an 8-string baritone acoustic guitar, Day creates a driving, percussive wall of sound that renders a drummer entirely unnecessary. It’s what he calls a “campfire punk rock mentality,” though this isn’t the Kumbaya kind of fire. It’s the kind where you toss in your regrets and watch the sparks fly. The track operates as a “patter song,” where the lyrics tumble out like spilled marbles confused, half-remembered memories clattering against each other.
The narrative here is frighteningly relatable. It’s about that specific, suffocating tension when the water rises that sudden accumulation of sorrow and affection for a past lover that you thought you’d walled off. Day navigates the inevitable slide back into being “possessed” by a memory with a vocal delivery that is upbeat yet painfully resigned. Taken from the album MAPS, the track underscores the stinging realization that getting older doesn’t always guarantee wisdom; sometimes, it just means the ghosts have been haunting you longer.
It leaves you wondering: when the emotional floodwaters inevitably return, is it bravery to swim against them, or is it sanity to just let them wash you away?
