Three Track Week #23: Becoming Someone Else
- Anne
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
How Music Questions The Person We Think We Are
Not every version of ourselves is one we choose. Sometimes change is shaped by loss, sometimes by time, and sometimes by the restless search for connection. This week Three Track Week #23, Fiddlehead, Ken Burgan and DICE each approach the idea of becoming someone else from a different perspective.
Listen to this week’s Three Track Week #23 selection.
This week’s tracks are available in our playlist INDIENOXZINE | Selections, updated weekly on Spotify.
Fiddlehead – When Change Becomes An Act Of Hope
With "Baby I'll Change", Fiddlehead return not simply with new music, but with a three-song EP born from grief, friendship and the fragile belief that people can become something more than their worst moments. The title track takes one of the most familiar promises in human relationships: "I'll change" and strips away its certainty, leaving only hope.
Sound / Mood
Beginning with restrained guitars and one of Patrick Flynn's most delicate vocal performances to date, "Baby I'll Change" gradually expands into an emotionally overwhelming finale. The band's hardcore roots remain unmistakable, but they are filtered through a broader, more cinematic palette that allows vulnerability to occupy as much space as urgency. Rather than exploding immediately, the song patiently gathers emotional weight until catharsis feels earned rather than inevitable.
Why This Matters
Popular culture loves redemption stories because they offer reassuring conclusions. Someone admits their mistakes, changes their life and emerges renewed. Real life is rarely so generous. More often, transformation exists somewhere between intention and reality, carried by people who desperately want to become different without knowing whether they actually can."Baby I'll Change" understands that distinction. The title itself functions less as a promise than as an expression of longing. It speaks to the painful space where hope survives despite repeated disappointment, where love persists even after trust has been tested. Rather than celebrating personal transformation as certainty, Fiddlehead recognize it as one of the most difficult acts of faith people ask of themselves and of each other.
Context
Released as the title track of the band's new EP, "Baby I'll Change" marks Fiddlehead's first new music since 2023's "Death Is Nothing To Us". Written following the death of vocalist Patrick Flynn's mother, the EP emerged from a period in which the band rediscovered not only their creative momentum but also the friendships that had always sustained them. Instead of extending their previous trilogy, these songs feel like the beginning of a new chapter - one that embraces uncertainty without abandoning hope.
🎧 Stream "Baby I'll Change" on Apple Music · Follow Fiddlehead on Instagram
Ken Burgan – Growing Older Without Standing Still
There is an unspoken assumption in popular music that relevance belongs to the young. New ideas, new sounds and new perspectives are often expected to come from emerging artists, while older musicians are quietly encouraged to revisit the past. On "Down There", California songwriter Ken Burgan refuses that expectation. Instead of looking backwards, he continues asking difficult questions.
Sound / Mood
Blending alternative rock, blues and psychedelic pop, "Down There" feels both grounded and elusive. Burgan's songwriting moves with the confidence of someone no longer interested in proving himself, allowing melody and reflection to unfold naturally rather than chasing immediacy. The result is warm, contemplative and quietly adventurous, never mistaking restraint for complacency.
Why This Matters
Age is often discussed in music as something artists either overcome or conceal. Yet creativity does not expire simply because culture shifts its attention elsewhere. If anything, experience can deepen artistic perspective by replacing urgency with clarity. "Down There" offers a different vision of creative longevity. Rather than presenting age as nostalgia, Burgan treats it as accumulated observation. His reflections on mortality, desire and inner peace reject the assumption that identity reaches a finished state at any particular point in life. Instead, the song suggests that becoming someone else is not a project reserved for youth. It remains an ongoing conversation between the life we have lived and the person we continue becoming.
Context
Produced by Hunter Burgan of AFI, "Somewhere Else" bridges generations without sacrificing Ken Burgan's singular voice. Drawing inspiration from figures as varied as John Coltrane, T.S. Eliot and Johnny Cash, the album feels less like a late-career epilogue than the natural continuation of a lifetime spent absorbing music, literature and experience into an unmistakably personal artistic language.
🎧 Stream "Somewhere Else" on Apple Music · Follow Ken Burgan on Instagram
DICE – Looking For Connection After Midnight
Nightlife has always carried two competing promises. One offers freedom, possibility and escape. The other quietly exposes loneliness beneath constant movement. On "Call Me For A Good Time", Australian indie outfit DICE occupy the uneasy space between those ideas, capturing the emotional blur where desire begins to resemble dependency.
Sound / Mood
Driven by pulsing basslines, shimmering synthesisers and understated indie-rock momentum, the track trades the bright immediacy of DICE's earlier work for something darker and more atmospheric. Jay Watson's layered synth textures drift through the arrangement like half-remembered conversations, creating a nocturnal soundscape that feels simultaneously euphoric and emotionally unsettled.
Why This Matters
Contemporary nightlife often promises connection while making genuine intimacy increasingly difficult to find. Endless invitations, endless conversations and endless distractions create the impression of constant proximity, yet emotional isolation frequently survives beneath the surface. "Call Me For A Good Time" captures that contradiction without moralizing it. The song understands how easily desire, addiction and devotion begin to overlap once loneliness enters the equation. The search for excitement gradually becomes the search for reassurance, while temporary encounters are asked to satisfy needs they were never designed to meet. Rather than judging those impulses, DICE present them as recognisably human—another attempt to become someone different, if only until morning.
Context
Taken from the forthcoming album "I Thought The Altitude Would Make It Worth The View", the single signals a noticeable evolution in DICE's sound. Moving beyond the raw energy of "Midnight Zoo", the Perth quartet embraces a more expansive and reflective aesthetic, pairing euphoric indie rock with themes of self-examination, liberation and emotional complexity.
🎧 Stream "Call Me For A Good Time" on Apple Music · Follow DICE on Instagram
Across these three releases, transformation appears less as triumph than as process. Fiddlehead search for redemption without guaranteeing it. Ken Burgan reminds us that identity continues evolving across an entire lifetime. DICE explore the fragile line between escape and genuine connection. Together, they challenge one of modern culture's favourite myths: that becoming someone else happens all at once. More often, it unfolds quietly: in conversations, in losses, in late nights and in the small decisions that slowly reshape who we are.
Further perspectives are available in our Artist Features, Cultural Essays and The Thing About Us, each situating music within broader cultural and creative contexts.
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