Is art a survival mechanism? Slow Packer’s take with “Reincarnation 2”

Slow Packer (brothers Jack Victor and Mike Henry Johnson) take a minimalist approach to the lessons of heartbreak and acceptance with their song “Reincarnation 2”. Gentle acoustic piano backdrops a marriage of reverb-laden electric guitar swimming behind the lead singer’s solemn and crooning vocals.

The words “Every incarnation of me is gonna be full of you/ Any replication of me has to be full of you” sings throughout the chorus of the song that the writer has deemed a tune showcasing the last stage of grief: acceptance.

With breakups come lessons that are learned, experiences that enrich and follow the timeline of our lives that follow after the relationship. These realities of love and loss are more than enough fuel to inspire the vulnerable and empathic hearts of artists alike.

This song was written around the onset of COVID-19’s explosion in the United States right around when Jack was going through a difficult time moving on from a failed romance, ending up living in his van and reaching a precipice of something… new. At this time, the band sought refuge in one of the few aspects of their life that maintained stability, their practice space.

“At that time the only place I could really be was in my music practice studio, which I held onto throughout that tumultuous period. I holed up in the studio and did the one thing I could do: turn the the emotions I was wrestling with into music,” Jack revealed in a statement.

It was in there that the pair wrote “Reincarnation 2” amongst four other tunes that eventually formed part of the five-track Slow Packer suite christened This Life and the Next.

Stream the closing track of the EP below.

Anjali Rose Kumar

Anjali Rose Kumar is a musician, videographer, and creative freak based in Brooklyn, NYC. Anjali is learning to cope with a self-imposed quarantine in NYC’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic by spending her hours recording music in her bedroom, watching her unemployment leave her bank account, and embarking on a newly revived love of writing. In fact, when Anjali was 10 years old she was convinced she would live her life as a writer, however, she would often confuse her teachers by making up her own vocabulary and therefore buried the interest for 15 years. Cheers to the new years ahead of us. You can find out more about Anjali here.