“HALF EVIL” By Tomato Soup

Tomato Soup’s latest single, “Half Evil,” shows how far the Denver-based folk-rock band has come. It can now be streamed on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, and Amazon Music. The track goes beyond current trends in mainstream indie music by studying broken identity, unresolved trauma, and a disoriented contemporary world. Her more than a single, this song is a poetic examination of the condition of our humanity, touching on influences from myth and psychoanalysis, political discourse, and personal memoir.

“Half Evil” begins with a bold reference to the classics: “The idea of a second birth / Aetiologies / Both human and divine, just like Hercules.” Immediately, Tomato Soup begins to tell a story, advancing in time, from ancient Greece to the present. Emotional trauma remains unresolved. A reference to Hercules, a demigod, implies that each one of us has a dual, human and divine heritage. It reflects the disparity between our reality and the glorious imaginary world of our dreams. The reference is clarifying, and, like the fragmented modernism of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, underscores a collective disorientation that defines our lived experience in this 21st century. From the start, the songwriting insists the listener engage with something deeper: the gulf between spiritual roots and contemporary alienation.

The piece then begins to tread into the psychological and mythological realms of the psyche, pulling references to Jung, the psychological components of religion, and existential doubt. Phrases like “Holy Saturday / Cryptomnesia / Comparative religion / Archetype dual-mother” suggest a state of suspension, of a soul imprisoned in a movement of faith and doubt. This moment in the song recalls a meditation on the despair of lost symbolic power and the forgotten roots of a constitutive framework. When the narrator pleads, “Is there good reason for symbolizing things, when I see everything in half-glimpsed meanings?”, we are brought to a point of crisis in the symbolic framework: what reason is there active in signification when everything seems to point to the death of meaning?

The invocation “Half evil” in the song reaches a point of hypnotic obsession, layered like a psychological echo. It recalls the rhythmic incantations of Leonard Cohen and the metaphoric, yet intensely emotional, self-interrogations of David Bowie. With each invocation of the phrase, the tension of the song magnifies and is a powerful demonstration of the disintegration of a self and identity due to the weight and friction of culture and the conflicts of the individual. There is a ritualistic quality in the hook. Each time “Half evil” returns, we are forced to strip another layer of self-deception, of shame, and the listener is made stark naked to the uncertainty that is definitely theirs.

In the last section, Tomato Soup takes an unexpected leap, bravely transitioning from mythic aspirations to direct, unpolished speech. The mention of “Donald Trump, media, and the consumer” brings the audience back to the political and cultural noise and takes a jab at the listener's political exhaustion. However, the song's most tragic treat arrives with the last confession, “You said all children fall in love with their abuser, I never knew her.” A personal experience is juxtaposed with a universal sentiment. The archetype transforms, and trauma spills over. Everywhere philosophical musings existed, humanity now suggests a cold reality. Here, the songwriting craft of Tomato Soup surfaces more than in most places. There is a myth, and a person trying to live it.

“Half Evil” is a proud display of ambition and emotional honesty. Fewer bands are willing to grapple with big ideas, and fewer people are willing to do so in the small, personal details of their songwriting. With this single, Tomato Soup is not a mere local act. They are phenomenal storytellers. Shout out to this Denver-born Motor-Folk collective, Alec Doniger, Adam Cabrera, Ronan Dowling, Riley Merino, Colin Sheehan, and Megan Ellsworth, for redefining the expressive range of contemporary folk-rock and for drawing a musical portrait of their community. “Half Evil” is not just a track to hear, it’s one to experience, reflect upon, and return to again and again.

Written by Manuel