Melancholy: A Review of “Lullaby” by Dads In The Park
By: Hassan Munhamanna
Tags: Music, Review, Mental Health, Dhaka, Rock

We lie when we say it’ll be alright, but maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be

Our lives are marred by an elusive sadness. It’s an ungraspable, directionless kind of melancholy.

It comes to us with immense force. In our teenage years it constantly brings us down to our knees. But even in later life we don’t quite learn what it really is, let alone how to deal with it. You realize that there’s something wrong, either with you or the world, or maybe both, and you realize that life isn’t exactly the rainbows and butterflies you made it out to be when you were a child.

Dads In The Park’s song Lullaby pokes at this ghost of a feeling.

In Lullaby, the misunderstandings, the needless violence, the pushes and pulls of life, all come out to play in some sublime words, beautifully laid out chords, and a music video that captures the visceral imagery of melancholy. The song is

the sadness of silent contemplation,

in an afternoon,

sat in front of a window

or a balcony looking out to an apartment complex,

or the one you go to sleep with (while telling the moon how it’s going to be alright).

Those of us who live on the surface, those who don’t go too deep into our feelings, we don’t quite realize that this sadness is a crime without a criminal. We try to get on with life blaming this or that, this person or that person. We try to cope with anything and everything that can keep us too busy to realize that life is just… sad.



This kind of sadness, this feeling of melancholy does not require a subject, a culprit, a criminal to cause it.

But this realization does not require any response. In fact, that is what the greater realization is. If life is inherently sad, what good can be there in causing hurt to others? The understanding of life’s great sorrow requires no blaming, no projection, no response, no violence. If anything, a little bit of acceptance probably makes it a tad bit better.



Lullaby speaks of this acceptance. It is contemplation for the contemplative, a place for the more thoughtful among us. For the more sensitive of us to wallow in the misery of life without any need for impulsive break stuff. You listen to it, you shed a solitary teardrop, and you go out to the sunset afresh; as if nothing’s happened and everything’s going to be alright.

This song reminds me of Saosin, a band that helped me cope with my own turbulent adolescence. I exhausted my youthful angst in their deep empathy for the sorrows of life, but even moreso in their optimism to make it better.

Our teenage years are marred with a silhouette of hormonal misery, and this song sounds like a song for that time. But in a life of endless adolescence this same excess of emotions, unnecessary violence, and the burden of hormones keep coming back; sometimes from others, sometimes from you to others.

Every day, all around us, balloons are popped, punches are thrown, racquets are thrown down, and arms are held with force. Faces with tear walk down our roads, helplessness stares at us in the face.

We can choose to ignore and walk on. Or we can pick up a guitar and try to do something about it; let a solo fly and hope that it heals all the wounds, that it helps at least one person move on and run from the pains of the other. It could be a lie, but you still say it.

This song is not alien to me. I have been there, I have been this, and I wish I could have this song with me back then. But hey, at least I’ll have it from now on.