The moment the jaunty guitar kicks in on John Smyths’ new single, “Now I’m Wiser”, you feel a familiar, comfortable warmth. It’s the sound of a good chair in a bar where the floor is sticky with spilled truths. And then the story starts, a classic yarn of a hard-living past yielding to a peaceful present. Smyths, a Dutch ex-metalhead singing country out of Germany, sounds less like he’s playing a part and more like he’s simply closing a ledger.
The music has that George Strait crispness, but there’s a festive defiance in the rhythm, a touch of The Mavericks winking from the corner. It’s a strange and pleasing cocktail: a sound built for a Saturday night dance hall, carrying a narrative about accepting the quiet of a Tuesday morning. The upbeat instrumentation is a brilliant foil to a tale of aging, loss, and the specter of a final curtain call. It’s not a mournful dirge for a misspent youth; it’s a victory lap run at a leisurely pace.
Listening, my mind drifted, bizarrely, to the Dutch vanitas paintings of the 17th century. Those canvases filled with skulls, snuffed-out candles, and ripening fruit weren’t meant to be depressing. They were reminders: time is short, so live with purpose. This song is a musical vanitas. Smyths lays out the guns and the glory of his past not with regret, but as artifacts of a life that had to be lived to get here. The central message seems to be that wisdom isn’t about erasing the past, but about finally understanding its weight and how to set it down gently.
It all settles into a feeling of profound contentment, a state achieved not by avoiding life’s battles, but by surviving them. The track leaves you with an odd, reflective calm. When you’ve made peace with all your former, more reckless selves, what are you supposed to do with all the quiet?
