I grew up in the countryside of Suffolk, England. A picturesque kind of place, rural, and relatively uninteresting to a growing child. I didn’t appreciate it then, but now I recognise it for a beautiful, if somewhat slow, place. People holiday there, occasionally.
In contrast, my Aunt lives in Bristol, and when I went to visit as a young boy I was struck by a sense of foreboding darkness that existed there, in contrast to my own environment. I must have visited sometime around the release of Tracy Chapman’s eponymous debut album because whenever I hear Behind The Wall, or Fast Car, or anything else of that album, I think of Bristol. I think of the comparative tapestry of diversity I experienced there, and the excitement and fear that accompanied it. A dark, urban, dread.
Fast Car always felt like it tapped that same excitement and fear… The endless potential we all theoretically have, combined with the dangerous reality of being stuck. One of the most instantly recognisable songs of our time, Chapman’s version shimmers with a naked vulnerability… She manages to sound disappointed, yet eager to have one more go around, in that car.
What The Kerosene Hours, real name Aaron Silverstein, does here is go for Fast Car’s jugular — the feeling lurking beneath the surface of Chapman’s original. It is dramatic, gothic, and emotional. The stark sound reflecting the scarred, sparse internal emotion of the song. With a slow pace combined with plenty of space, the verse feels like something by Majical Cloudz. Heavy and contemplative. And when the chorus breaks, it is as though all the glass in your mind shatters, a gothic, dramatic yelp emitting from Silverstein’s throat, unleashing all his pain.
It could all be too much, and yet… and yet. I was still pondering whether to write about this song the day I first heard it. Towards the end of the day, I found myself rushing through Tottenham Court Road tube station, and heard someone busking. They were playing Fast Car, and something just felt right. I had a moment. I thought of the dark, urban, dread. And I thought of the hope.
In the words of Silverstein himself:
“Few things are more tragic than the passing of time — Sadness alone hurts, but tragedy is a deeper kind of pain that comes from how long the sadness stays with us … My cover tries to capture that passage of time and how moments can be beautiful and lonely all at once.”
Born and raised in LA, Silverstein makes music inspired by the hours between midnight and 4am. The Kerosene Hours, which Aaron describes as, “That strange pocket of time that exists between real life and someone else’s dream, a time when everything is a shade of neon red, lonely blue, or sickly green, a time when anything and everything can happen”. He is currently working on his debut album as The Kerosene Hours.
