There’s an intimacy to the new FREE/MAN release, “The Reconnection EP,” that borders on a welcome invasion of personal space. It is the sonic equivalent of someone leaning in, not to share a secret, but to create the silence where your own might finally surface. Charlie Freeman hasn’t built a grand cathedral of sound here; he’s simply furnished a quiet room with stark, necessary truths and left the door open.
The journey begins with the deceptive simplicity of “Not Tomorrow,” a quiet rebellion against the tyranny of a mind that loves to race ahead. The music itself is a tonic; a warm, unvarnished acoustic sound that grounds you instantly. It feels immediate, urgent in its stillness. There’s a texture to the acoustic guitar that reminds me, for some reason, of running a thumb over the worn spine of a book you’ve read a dozen times. It’s a song about choosing the tangible “beautiful day with you” over the shapeless fog of anxiety, a conscious act of planting your feet in the now.
From that present moment, the EP splinters into two kinds of captivation. “Bluebird” is a hypnotic surrender, a “lazy summer evening” of a track that wraps around you. You’re willingly spellbound by a “slow dancer” who becomes the entire world. It’s a gorgeous, drowsy kind of devotion. Then, you’re shaken awake by the formidable spirit of “Redemption Song.” Here, the chains are not of love but of history and mind. Hearing a plea to “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery” delivered with such soulful clarity is a jolt of cold, vital air. It’s a profound testament to the power of music not merely to soothe, but to activate.
But the final destination of this EP, its strange and beautiful core, is “Two Witches.” This is the sound of a necessary self-destruction. The track lays bare the messy work of confronting your own contradictions, of letting your heart break just so it can be reassembled with honesty. It’s the musical equivalent of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold lacquer. The song doesn’t hide the cracks; it traces them in gold, finding a final, hard-won peace in the line, “I am loved.”
“The Reconnection EP” doesn’t offer easy answers. It presents a map traced with scuffed hands—a guide to sitting with your chaos, to finding freedom in your head, and to loving the fractured whole of who you are. But after you’ve reconnected with all these broken, beautiful pieces of yourself, are you strong enough to hold them all at once?
