A Caged Bird/Limitations of Life | The Cinematic Orchestra + Roots Manuva

I’ve been listening to this track on my bus ride to work and it’s eerily perfect for it.

It’s starts off with this upbeat chain-gang-like sound. That sound created to help someone find some sort of joy in a relentless monotony. And then that kick comes in - sounding like an off-kilter heartbeat. And then Roots Manuva enters with his poetry.

Perfection’s in that non perfection.

And then that chorus.

That chorus comes in like biggest breath of fresh air. Feeling like the most expansive inhale and exhale. Like it’s reminding me that breathing - the thing I forget to do all the time - is the thing that I need more than anything else. That’s it’s the thing that actually makes me who I am.

And then the track gets more upbeat and sheds light on that monotony-fighting sound it was grounded in:

Well, I pick up my foot and do those things. Improve thyself, improve with things
I thank you for the healing in wings of meditation
Situation is strange to us. Stranger things are claiming us.
I've been told we’ve easily as easy as the breathing be.
Not so, never so, she's been told she's done sold a part of her soul

How the hell would we let it go? How the hell would we ever know?

And then that chorus comes back

Why would you hide from yourself?

And then it has this lovely ending.

This isn’t the first song to call out that feeling of “caged” or “limited”.

But fuck, if it doesn’t do it in the most beautiful and expansive way with some great fucking beats and lyrics.