Spring Silver’s “Gold Star” is on a Level All Its Own

I don’t often find myself speechless. Like almost never. But the new single from indie rock mad scientist Spring Silver is on a level all its own. Flowing between hypnotic electronic vibes and propulsive psych-rock, “Gold Star” is absolutely overflowing with vision and creativity. Despite it’s nearly 8 minute run-time, songwriter K Nkanza jumps between so many big ideas and sonic universes that it feels shockingly brief. It’s like a whole album’s worth of sounds trimmed down to its barest essentials. Coupled with a video that cuts up the detritus of so many stale memes, throwback commercials, and surreal imagery, it’s somehow both overwhelming and intensely cathartic. In K Nkanza’s hands, it all adds up to a vicious indictment of the way all images, all sounds, all ideas, are just more slurry for capitalist consumption. By mining the most disposable images from late-stage capitalism, Spring Silver has managed to create something absolutely vital.

K Nkanza explains: “Growing up with the internet, I was watching a lot of content where people would take various media and just slice and dice it. Whether it was for humor, or for reverence of the original material, or whatever. It’s still happening now, and you can see it on tiktok with corecore videos and fancams and stuff. I wanted to do something like that with this video but I didn’t want to make the thematic pull or the message obvious. Just kind of let the experience hit people. I wanted to let the sonics of the song guide my visuals more than the lyrics. The lyrics are pretty straightforward tonally, in their condemnation of American capitalism. But, the song itself kind of straddles a lot of different moods: exuberance, anxiety, all this shifting stuff.”

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