Ears Wide Open: Dielines

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Dielines (Photo by James Michael Juarez)
Dielines (Photo by James Michael Juarez)

One cannot change the past, of course, but for better or worse the mind eventually changes it for you. The beautifully melancholic second single from Los Angeles duo Dielines roots around in the memory, a place where time often burnishes hard edges and colors history in rosy hues.

The work of Daniel Berkman and Trevor O’Neill (who are bandmates in Possible Oceans), “Buried You to Keep You Safe” was inspired by an epsiode of Radiolab dealing with the fluid nature of memory. “The song deals with the notion that the memories we revisit most frequently are often our least accurate, constantly filtered through our perspective as they drift farther and farther from the truth,” Berkman says. “The song is about burying the memories of a past lover to keep them safe from the haze and softening of time.”

Cloudy synths, strings and finger-picked guitars combine to elevate the duo’s folk music to something seemingly carried by the wind, or in this case the winds of time.

“Buried” follows Dielines’ first single “Easy Does It,” which, Berkman explains, was written in the entrails of a bad relationship during a time he was “transitioning from Portland back to Los Angeles after chasing the shadows of Elliott Smith.”

||| Stream: “Buried to Keep You Safe” and “Easy Does It”