Live Review: Golden Vessel makes the most out of life's missed opportunities with 'MOONSTONE'

Life’s missed opportunities can evoke an agonisingly deep well of emotions: regret, frustration, a sense of cosmic injustice and a tinge of entitlement, all swirling around in a seemingly endless vortex of retroactive what-ifs. In my experience, at least, I tend to conceal the very genuine sting of these moments of failure by putting on a different set of emotions, which most of the time is either apathy or a kind of que sera, sera fatalistic acceptance of life’s inevitability and unknowability. Whether or not I actually believe them, or whether I invariably talk myself into believing them, is beside the point. On his latest single, ‘MOONSTONE’, Brisbane musician GOLDEN VESSEL masks disappointment with a romantic hue, perhaps finding resolution in the universality of the experience.

Linking up again with frequent collaborators ELKKLE and AKUREI, the trio craft a gently swaying piece of romantic electronica, held down by a clunky hip-hop beat and washed in this skipping, chiming synth melody. Of the inspiration behind the track, Golden Vessel explains that: "I remember I wrote the word ‘MOONSTONE’ down on my iphone notes when I was out and about, and then that night I googled it and started reading about all the missing and stolen moon rocks that got brought back from the first Apollo missions.

A couple of nights later Elkkle, Akurei and I were hanging out and we started making a beat. Akurei recorded some guitar and Elkkle chopped it up and then we built around that. I started telling them about the stolen moonstones and then morphed it into a metaphor for a conversation we were having earlier about missed opportunities and when we or friends miss out on something that should’ve been in reach (and the frustration around that). The stolen moonstones became the missed opportunities and we all started writing”.

Much like previous single ‘BIGBRIGHT’, ‘MOONSTONE’ doesn’t adhere to the sort of rigid structure of your typical collaborative track. Elkkle, Akurei and Golden Vessel aren’t going verse-for-verse or even verse-chorus feature-verse here. The chemistry is more fluid, more generous and more interwoven than that, each members’ contribution flowing in and out of one another (in a way that almost reminds me of a MIGOS track).

Which isn’t to say that each artist doesn’t have their individual moments to shine - Golden Vessel leans once again into the wonderfully gravelly timbre of his softly-sung, borderline-spoken vocals, while Akurei comes through with a silky R&B performance and Elkkle’s distinctive flow sits somewhere between the two. Instead of being artificially restricted and confined to their own spaces, ‘MOONSTONE’ finds Golden Vessel and co. inhabiting the same space together, which makes the track feel like something more than simply a collaboration. It’s more like a comforting conversation between long friends.

Sometimes it’s just nice to know that there are other people out there who’ve also felt disappointed by life.

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Words by KYLE FENSOM

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