The Dream by The Favors

Just pretend she was just a friend

Love Makes Fools of Everyone

The Dream is an album of duets. Phineas and Ashe have strong voices, and their vocals feel real and raw. In The Little Mess You Made, they hold big notes for some 15 seconds. That is not easy to do!

The music is grand in an old-school way. You can hear the instruments (which I know is weird to say), but I mean it doesn’t sound like computer music.

Not that computer-music is bad. I love it! I love Hard and Soft! One of my favorite songs was AMOR DE MA VIE, with a huge, auto-tune-techno twist in the middle. I just say this to compare what The Dream sounds like. You can hear the piano, guitar, drums.

The songs feel one-take. In between hitting big notes, we hear Phinneas and Ashe taking breaths. In Ordinary People, Phineas chuckles mid-lyric. As a producer, he leaves in snippets of the bandmates talking to each other. Ashe telling the guys to “fuck it up,” Phinneas noticing they went so hard “a symbol fell over.” It feels like the bandmates are having fun.

The music feels in-the-moment, but not last-ditch. The lyrics are clever. In the title track, the rhyme scheme is in the middle of each sentence, sometimes a word:

I know if you wanted to call

you would, You live in your car

but you say you're in Holl-

ywood, You sold your guitar

just to pay for that video

You sent to the studio

it's all about who you know

The rhyme schemes in this album are out of this world. In another, he rhymes “he said to me” with “condescendingly: “love makes fools of everyone, he said to me, condescendingly.”

I Tried to Warn You

So if the music sounds real, live, authentic…what are they singing about?

This album is a love story. We hear about a break-up that just won’t stick. The boyfriend and girlfriend know they shouldn’t be together, but they “have a hard time letting you go.”

The music sets the tone. Love is lived in the moment. It’s not planned, curated, or streamlined. It’s raw, it’s imperfect. It’s beautiful, but it’s hard.

And that’s what makes it all the more real.

Coming Around Again

In my life and in love stories I’ve noticed roughly two types of romance. Love that is structured, and love that is undefined.

Structured love gives stability. We have predictability, routine. The downside can be boredom.

Undefined love is a rush. It feels electric. The highs are way higher. But nothing comes for free—we miss out on security, safety, expectations.

The love story in The Dream is firmly in the undefined camp. This couple is drawn to each other against every point of reason.

But they’re drawn to each other.

If We’ve Gone Mad, It’s Not So Bad

Here you need to go into the songs and talk about what their love is like. The pain. The attempted separations that never stick. Wishing you could love anyone else to be free of it. Wishing you could go mad to be free of it. Doing the little steps to be free of it “wash my sheets and change my number, go to therapy and acupuncture.” The intimate details that linger right after a break-up “razor still in my socket and you hair’s in the drain” and long after a break up “before you were awake you would keep me warm” . Even when it hurts, we stick around “the littlest mistake can leave the darkest bruise…just pretend she was just a friend.” Even when it’s desperate, we stick around, “still pick up your mother from the airport, she says I should move on.”

What do we make of that? What is to be made of this invisible force that draws to people together, even if it ruins their lives, even if they don’t want it?

Who is in control here? The people, or the love?

“It all comes back to you”. When we connect with someone, we seem to be willing to turn over every aspect of our lives in pursuit of that person. Why?

Carl Jung talks about this.

I Didn’t Call Just to Say Hello

In predictable love, our eyes can wander. In undefined love, our hearts get a little to sticky.

But in both these cases, people are after the same thing—that connection. We want to feel seen and to truly see someone.

I think if we strip away everything—on both sides—the routine, the stability, the rush, the energy, the predictability, the unpredictability—we are left with connection. That is what I think we’re after, no matter what side we’re on. If we’ve paired up, we have to maintain the connection—or we’ll wonder off to connect with someone else. If we’re on this see-saw of who-knows-what’s-gonna-happen, the only reason we’re sticking around for that love-sea-sickness is for the chance at sticking with the connection.

That’s why “love makes fools of us.” We just want to be seen. To connect. It’s so simple.

And I think that’s what makes everything else so complicated.