Taking the prog rock approach of putting out a ten-minute-plus track, Ricksha Radio presents an odyssey of a song that explores the incredibly dark themes of suicide. And it’s certainly not for the faint of heart with it’s more provocative and straight to the point lyrics.
Drawing on real life events of two people in his life, singer, songwriter and keyboardist Bob Dimick was inspired to write undone after finding out about a successful and a failed suicide attempt of two people he knows. Thus Undone was born, with its themes of ‘what is done, cannot be Undone’.
Undone never takes the easy approach to prog, instead of flowing through an ever-changing array of melodies and different sounds. They could easily all be their own individual songs, but instead coallescs into a journey of a song. Starting out as a straightforward rock ballad, moving into an electronic instrumental piece, then back into a country rock song with acoustic guitars.
It has so many different instruments and compositions thrown in across the twelve-minute runtime, that it’s a task to break them all down without listening to the full song. The key focal points themselves are broken apart by surprisingly complex bridges of piano, keyboard, and guitars. There isn’t a single moment where something interesting isn’t happening within the songs composition.
It’s a surprisingly compelling song that explores dark themes with some tongue-in-cheek flair. Though the musical and lyrical delivery may be a bit of a questionable way of presenting the idea of suicide prevention, that’s a nitpick and a very clear person choice by Dimick with his song writing.
Overall, Undone doesn’t carry a single dull moment throughout, a testament to the composition and effort that Dimick displays. It’s a compelling song that has it’s more lighthearted moments but still carries themes of “why would someone do this”, and how every action will carry consequences.