The act of flying without wings has been a persistent human dream for centuries. Not quite Icarus, but Tim Camrose—Manchester’s own soul-stirrer—takes flight on a more metaphorical level with “Fly Again,” a quiet anthem for anyone who’s hit rock bottom and wondered if the view will ever change from down there. Weirdly enough, it reminds me of those scenes in disaster movies where everything’s burning, and the hero physically has to get up. The message here? You don’t need explosions; sometimes, it’s about the soul rising up.
Camrose, whose voice feels like Sunday afternoon warmth after a week of thunderstorms, weaves through the verses with that familiar conversational cadence. But it’s the entrance of the Collectives Gospel Choir that subtly flips the script. Gospel harmonies, like a collective exhale, swoop into the mix not like a bulldozer of sound—it’s softer than that—but lifting, as though they’re singing directly into your dusty corners, the ones you forgot needed clearing out.
The guy’s not just chewing on platitudes here. There’s a deep-seated challenge in “Fly Again.” It says, “Yes, the world’s chaos, and you’re not invincible, but maybe, just maybe, you don’t have to be.” Philosophically, this could be akin to stitching together the faith of a gospel choir with Manchester’s factory grit. Toss in a dash of Camrose’s velvet acoustic strums, and boom—it’s less a revival tent and more like a kitchen table conversation with your wiser future self.
Take it as an unintentional footnote to all that generational trauma talk we’ve been having lately. If music were a relay race, this track would be passing the baton just in time.
And sometimes the baton isn’t fancy. Just functional enough to keep you running.
