The Music and Planet Project

Unending wars. Climate change and environmental destruction. Rising inequality and corruption. The list of ills plaguing society is seemingly endless. Anyone who dips their toes into the abyss of the daily news is confronted with bottomless negative reality. With conflict and chaos as the norm, any glimmer of good news is the surprising exception.

Nick Cheshire, frontman of Indigo Daydream, turns all of this on its head in “What If It All Works Out”, a semi-psychedelic rock song centered around questioning the anxiety of the modern day. From the opening moments of the track, the listener is greeted with thumping drums and big guitars, setting the expectation for something potentially dark. Nick continues to set the stage throughout the first verse, describing his cynical disposition about the possibility that the whole human race is unraveling. However, by the chorus, he quickly turns it around by asking a “perfectly plausible question: what if it all works out?” After setting the listener’s expectations for something dark, the artist reverses course and turns his anxiety into a tool for optimism-tinged curiosity.

By the time we’re in the second verse, we feel more hopeful. Ominous questions still loom, but the distorted guitars are no longer a harbinger of some deeper doom; they are now the cathartic release of hope and belief in the possibility of a better future. 

In addition to its ear-pleasing sonic qualities – the interweaving harmonies, the atmospheric reverbs, and the big and bold guitars – “What If It All Works Out” is intriguing for its use of rock and roll aggression aimed not at its usual suspects but rather pointed at the lack of optimism in society. We have become so accustomed to doom about the bigger picture that we don’t even stop to ask the question of whether anything good is on the horizon. And rather than glossing over the darkness clouding our modern-day reality and pretending that it doesn’t exist (as is often the habit of the naysayers and down-players of societal woes), the artist acknowledges that it is real and that we do face daunting challenges. But rather than bathe himself in the gloom, he stops to ponder whether it could resolve into something more positive. It’s at least worth asking the question, is it not?

Listen to the track here.