Feature | Water Street | Everest

The latest single from the New Jersey-based band Water Street is an ambitious endeavor. At five minutes long—much longer than the standard pop single—the song is appropriately titled Everest, a harrowing allusion to the highest peak in the world.

Everest is, by my count, the band’s longest single to date. They have been steadily releasing music since winning Dorney Park’s Battle of the Bands in 2016, and just as only the most seasoned climber would approach Mount Everest expecting to scale its peak, Water Street has earned the right to release a five-minute single, title it Everest, and expect the listener to bask in its glory.

The song’s narrator, too, seems to approach the daunting prospect of rekindling a past love with a sense of hard-earned resilience. “Seasons, patterns / Do you miss me?” he sings in the opening lines, appealing to what seems to have been a tumultuous road to redemption. The narrator’s journey has produced in him the self-assuredness needed to stare down his Everest, making no bones about the person he’s become. “What I am, what I’m not,” he sings. “I don’t want to live in fragments.”

The song’s instrumentation is a testament to the way life’s circumstances unfold, slowly forming a collage that represents the nuances and intricacies of our lives. It opens with a stark bassline, upon which a slight synth is layered, soon followed by piano, guitars, drums, and finally, that gorgeous saxophone that ties the entire composition together in a way that is both unexpected and entirely inviting to the listener.

Every piece of Everest—from its title and the lyrics’ poetic imagery to the lush instrumentation—works evocatively together to create a world that is captivating and effective. We admire the journey that the narrator (and the band) has been on, one that has led them to this towering moment of catharsis.