Sour Fiction continues the excavation with ‘Whispered and Fast’

Jose Galeana wrote the song “Whispered and Fast” a couple of years back in the midst of a romantic breakup. Yet even existing within that emotional whirlwind, the Columbus musician embraced a more aerial view, taking into account the emotions and experiences of everyone involved as he worked.

“It was very much trying to process it in a way that felt big picture and not like an I-miss-you song. I didn’t want it to just be a wad of emotions; that’s not what I was going for,” Galena said in early May ahead of his single release show at Rambling House on Saturday, May 16, supported by Villagerrr’s Mark Allen Scott (doors open at 5 p.m.). “I really wanted to try and step back and understand my perspective better, and to understand someone else’s perspective better. … And now, a couple years later, I see myself in situations where I’m repeating the same patterns. So, it’s really interesting to look back, especially now as I’m releasing it, and to see myself feeling similar things as I did when I wrote the song. I think that’s a cool thing about music in general, how it can reach forward and backward in time.”

From the time he first picked up the guitar in middle school, playing an acoustic lent to him by an uncle, Galeana leaned into the instrument as a tool for songwriting, learning a few ancillary chords from a guitar workbook received as a Christmas gift and then pivoting immediately to writing his own material. 

“I just always had that want to create things, and so that’s what I did, and that’s what I keep doing,” said Galeana, who prior to taking up music flirted with the idea of becoming a video game developer and then later a film director. “And I think that’s why I fell in love with music, specifically, because it was very accessible to me. If you wanted to make a movie, that’s a whole thing. And even to make a video game, you need to learn how to program. But with music, you can write a song in your room by yourself with an acoustic guitar, and no one can tell you it’s not a song. It could be bad, but it’s still a song you made. And I kind of just kept doing that.” 

For Galeana, the songwriting process serves as a form of excavation, allowing him to scrape away those ideas that exist more readily at the surface in search of some deeper, more universal truth. For this reason, when approaching a situation that he considers to still be emotionally raw, it’s not unusual for the musician to write and then discard one or two songs as a means of purging.

“Those are the ones where it doesn’t feel like I have anything to say, and it’s kind of just vomiting on the page,” Galeana said. “I was going through my old voice memos, and I listened to this one song I wrote maybe one or two songs before ‘Whispered and Fast,’ and it was very much that. It was right in the midst of my feelings about that situation, and it was raw in a way that felt unfinished, and not raw in a way that felt authentic, if that makes sense. … It felt like it was something for me rather than something to be released, almost like a diary entry. But then I wrote another song about the same situation, and it was like, ‘Okay, I actually have something more molded here. It’s not just feelings on a page.’”

“Whispered and Fast,” released earlier this week, opens with terse acoustic strumming, Galeana singing softly as though through clenched teeth in a way that creates a sense of tension. “And I told you I missed you,” he sings. “Things are not the same.” Then 30 seconds in, all of this releases, Galeana locking into a loping groove that shuffles along on shaggy drums, steady guitar, and neon pulses of synthesizer. 

Building the track over the course of a year, Galeana said he homed in on a particular feeling he hoped to capture with the production, and which he described as a sense of authenticity at odds with some of the comparatively more-polished songs he has encountered. “And it’s nothing against that, and I like a lot of computer music,” he continued, “but there are times when I listen to songs that feel like they were written with intent and it doesn’t come through in the recording, and it almost feels a little sterile. And I was trying to combat some of that sterileness that I’ve heard in music.”

In a way, the production is meant to reflect what Galeana felt in that fragile moment, each aspect of the song rippling with uncertainty, self-doubt, loss, anger, heartache, and resolve. “With all of the songs in this new batch I’m working on, I’m taking the same approach where I want it to feel imperfect,” he said. “And maybe it’s about capturing the imperfect feeling of going through all of this stuff, where it’s not cut and dry. And I realize that’s not a revolutionary thought, but it’s taking that idea, putting it into sound, and making you feel… And I guess I can end the sentence there. I want you to be able to feel.”