Franklin Gotham returns with a tune that sinks in deep and stays with you. On “Caroline,” the lead single from their most recent EP of new songs, “Good Times Bad Times,” the alt-indie act’s veterans prove that they continue to be a lightly spun, quizzically magnetic force since 2013.
Released with Jivin’ Jones Records, “Caroline” is a hazy, emotional trip through the knotty wreckage of love. It’s not the grand declaration or the heated climax of a romance, but what happens after. It’s the ghost of a relationship that remains in your bones. The track glides with a dreamy melancholy, its eerie melodies fully met by stark and suitably subtle instrumentation made for a rainy day, a late-night drive, or that quiet moment when memories sneak up uninvited.
“Caroline” is a smack-dab in the sweet spot of college-age indie, calm, introverted, and emotionally raw without being melodramatic. There’s a maturity to Franklin Gotham’s songwriting that feels lived-in. This is the ache of what could’ve been when you were old enough to know better but perhaps not quick enough.
However, its degree of self-awareness sets “Caroline” apart. Its song doesn’t attempt to fix the hurt or pretend to offer false hope. It sits with it like a friend who doesn’t try to improve things but lets you feel anyway. That emotional honesty, buoyed by a mild indie-pop soundscape, separates Franklin Gotham.
“Good Times Bad Times” EP is set against emotional dynamism, and “Caroline” is a quietly trained centerpiece. It’s a slow-burner and a record that peels back new layers with every listen, a sign of Franklin Gotham’s strength for growth and fervent, real-world connection.
For those in search of music that’s at once personal and universal, “Caroline” is your next addition to the playlist. Franklin Gotham doesn’t write songs so much as soundtracks that are emotional in-between, and we don’t always have the words for them. And in “Caroline,” they’ve handed us a gentle, bittersweet anthem for the ones we can’t forget.
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