In “Crazy World,” Eleyet McConnell channel a restless honesty that is as much an invocation of rock’s past as it is a testament to the fraught present. The title track of their award-winning album unfolds like a rambling confession—a call to awaken amid a society that seems to have lost its bearings. Angie and Chris McConnell, both as a married couple and as lifelong collaborators, embrace the wild contradictions of our times, echoing the bitterness and beauty of classic rock while speaking to modern anxieties.
There is something deliberately timeless in the track’s architecture. Angie’s blues-inflected vocals summon memories of Beth Hart’s guttural earnestness, while her impassioned delivery hints at the spectral influence of Fleetwood Mac’s mystic incompleteness. Chris’s guitar work, steeped in the languid swagger of 70s rock—reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s probing melodies and The Doobie Brothers’ shimmering licks—completes this sonic landscape. Their interplay is not an exercise in nostalgia but rather a pointed reminder that the lineage of rock has always been as much about confronting chaos as it is about comfort.
The lyrics, part lament and part love letter, capture our era’s disillusionment. Lines such as “Been waiting for the time we can get up and leave / People here can’t see the forest for the trees” resonate not only as a dissection of societal complacency but also as a universal yearning for clarity and escape. There is a regal desperation in the refrain, “Even though the world is burning down / You walked through the fire and pulled me out,” which gestures toward survival in an increasingly unruly landscape. One would be wise to note how these words, rather than heralding resignation, forge a pathway toward personal and collective rejuvenation—a spark reminiscent of the transformative moments in rock history when the only way out was through the flames.
The accompanying music video, with its raw, intimate snapshots of home life interspersed with performance imagery and the surreal addition of a “crazy world” chicken, might at first seem like a playful misdirection. Yet, it further underscores the band’s commitment to the idea that even absurdity has its place in a world gone mad. The humble chicken becomes a kind of talisman—a small, unexpected emblem of the ridiculousness and resilience that defines our era.
In a critical moment for rock, when many bands seem content to merely revisit old formulas, Eleyet McConnell strike out with “Crazy World” as a reminder that the ferocity of the past remains a potent force. Their synthesis of introspection, raw emotion, and chiming guitars is both an homage and a reinvention—a declaration that in these bewildering times, the best recourse may be to live, love, and inevitably, rock on.
-Emily Raven
