Conversations

PREMIERE // Saltlick – Circles

Posted on Sep 1, 2018By Misha

Post by Misha

As this song’s chorus goes viciously round and round, I see two people walking in a circle. They move at the same speed, and follow the circumference of the circle precisely. In the image in my head there’s nothing else around, no light except for a bright spotlight overhead, which is making them both sweat. In this experiment, each person was told to follow the other. It is going both very well and very badly.

Then suddenly one of the people, it doesn’t matter which, realizes that this has been a terrible mistake. They turn abruptly, and walk in a very straight line away. They don’t look back.

I asked Brianna Snider, the woman behind Saltlick, about the inspiration behind the evocative “Circles”, which is the second single from her upcoming debut full length, Until Next Time. Here’s what she had to say:

I wrote “Circles” as an epilogue of sorts to my previous single “Mint Green” without actually knowing it. Over the summer I had let various people in my life consume my thoughts and it became a detriment to my mental health and self-worth.

“Mint Green” was about letting this consume me. “Circles” is the antithesis to this.

I had decided that I was no longer letting other people drive my life, and throughout my long writing sessions (where I would often be isolated in my basement away from my family & would skip meals to write) I found this uptempo anger came out. It was out of my element to write something faster pace, but for some reason it felt right.

The song originally ended abruptly after the repeat of the chorus, but I realized that by letting that final section come out screaming and kicking, it rounded out exactly what I wanted to say.

In the end, Until Next Time is a collection of what I’ve really wanted to say.

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Snider’s statement reminds me of one of the great gifts of being an artist – that ability to go back to a moment, a person, a place, and slow it down, take it apart, and say just exactly what you wanted to say all along. And how when that’s done really well, as this is, the gift is passed to whomever is on the other side of the art, so that we can go back to our own moments, people, or places, and say goodbye to them too.


Until Next Time is out November 10th via Community Radio Tapes. Pre order it here. Keep up with Saltlick on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.