Can a song be both a love letter and hate mail? Sin City by Charlie Gore attempts to bridge that gap. Like a marriage in a roadside chapel, Charlie rushes through the positives and negatives of his vision of Las Vegas, finding plenty to hate and even more reason to stay. He wants to disappear into the conglomerate mass of people at their lowest point, drowning his sorrows at the bottom of a whiskey glass. He wants to wallow. He wants a chance to forget. Bars become places of respite, where just for a moment, Charlie can take a breath as another member of this damned crowd instead of who he was and all the problems that go along with that. It’s pushing off his problems for his future self, but that’s a problem for his future self. His present self just wants another drink.
The call of the void is something we’ve explored several times within this series, but this might be one of my favorite examples. Charlie Gore uses overwhelmingly negative language to describe the people of Sin City, yet simultaneously wants to join in the revelry if it means forgetting his troubles for even a moment. There’s a strange comfort in being surrounded by other people falling apart. Misery loves company, but apparently it also loves neon lights and an open bar. Sometimes the desire isn’t to solve our problems, but to hide from them long enough to feel like ourselves again. Charlie captures that feeling beautifully within the chords of this song, even if the escape he’s searching for comes with a bill that his future self will eventually have to pay.
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