‘Get Out While You Can’ EP Review: A Dreamy Journey from Brighton-based brothers ‘Sametime’
I stumbled onto this gem of an EP today. It’s Sunday afternoon, the sun has just disappeared behind the hills and I’m thinking maybe I’ve gone away with it. The best music has a way of making you leave, fly away with your thoughts onto a better, dreamier place.
Dreamy is how I’d describe Sametime’s music. It’s like looking through a movie lens, where life is just a little better. The lighting is just right, every hurt has a reason, and every love has a happy ending. It wishes for a better life, a better love, in a city that promises everything.
‘Sametime’ brothers Tim and Sam Aitken recently moved to Brighton from Australia. A move like that isn’t easy. It takes some very big dreams to make it happen. It takes determination, hope, and ambition, all of which transpire into their work and music.
‘Get Out While You Can’ features 7 tracks and a whole lot of emotion. It can be exciting and curious (The Start) or romantic, longing (Modern Day Bonnie & Clyde). It can be playful (Pickels) or inspiring (The Truman Show). Most of all it feels real. It’s intense, nostagic, takes you away in all its force, like an ocean wave of the bluest shade.
The final track, Is This The End?, made this EP so special to me and is the reason I sat down to write this. This last single captures a very specific feeling, which I often struggle to put into words myself (quite ironic, for a writer). Is This The End? is about Tim and Sam’s leaving Australia, and is the emotional peak of the EP. This song is about the difficulty of making the right choice for yourself. Of moving your life someplace else, knowing that home will never feel the same anymore.
Brighton is someplace else for a lot of people. We’ve all left home behind, we’ve all felt the guilt, the loneliness, and the explosive excitement of a new start. Sametime capture that feeling perfectly, that moment in which your heart splits in two, caught in between the life here, now, and the life there, then.
Moving away takes a lot of strength. Most days are easy, you don’t think about it. But then, you notice your dad’s hair getting greyer with every selfie he sends you. You notice your grandma hears you less and less with every phone call. Is This The End? reminds me that I’m not alone in this experience, and it makes it just a little bit easier.
With ‘Get Out While You Can’, Sametime display incredible humanity and depth, both in their musicality and lyricism. Their songs resonate with me on a deeply personal level, and I’m so grateful for having discovered this beautiful corner of Brighton’s music scene.
This band’s one to look out for.
Written by Roberta Guarini