Danger is rarely attractive because it appears safe. Kissing Lions expresses that contradiction, with dark band Ghost Painted Sky examining the temptation to move closer to something despite understanding the damage it may cause. The New England group frame the tension through their characteristic meeting point of darkwave, goth and post punk, opening another path toward their forthcoming album Failure Blooms.
The song heads a three-track digital maxi-single that also features the more buoyant Effervescent Remix and My Words Are Not My Own. The latter turns toward a different form of self-destruction: surrendering one’s individual voice while attempting to fit inside a crowd or identity that was never truly theirs. Musically, it draws out the lighter, synth-oriented eighties current running through Ghost Painted Sky’s sound.
Ghost Painted Sky's David Strong says: “‘Kissing Lions’ describes those mostly vain attempts to seize on anything that creates a fleeting feeling of being alive for a moment amid relentless waves of the humdrum, doldrums, and failure, which so often end up being misguided and ultimately just creating a thicker mire even more strangling than the original situation one sought to escape... bad decisions that bite back and create further downward spirals.”
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Ghost Painted Sky
Cover art by David Strong
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