Mo Klé – “Expert”
Photo by Johannes Gruber
Swiss songwriter René Grünenfelder, aka Mo Klé, returns to the blog with his brooding, acerbic soft-rock track “Expert.” He does so sounding like a man leaving the world behind as the rest of humanity argues itself into madness.
Built on a sure-footed locomotive groove, the arrangement pushes forward with the steady patter of the drums. Weather-beaten acoustic guitar and chugging bass, the track moves with a reflective melancholy. Electric guitars moodily smoulder with a caramel intensity. There are shades of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Jackson Browne in the world-weary magic of this track.
Mo Klé sings with an almost conversational tone, only lifting his register and expressing more melody over the chorus sections. This isn’t a performance that is attacking the mic, more a man that is thoughtfully mourning next to it.
If this description gets you picturing escape, restlessness, loneliness and emotional drift, it marries well with the lyrical meaning behind “Expert.” In this song, journalists posture, politicians debate, and facts mutate. Mo Klé doesn’t offer an alternative world view; he merely documents the emotional exhaustion. This isn’t protest music, it’s post-truth music.
Mo Klé elaborates: “The song is a commentary on today’s culture of debate, the media landscape, and the post-truth era we live in. Most people have probably noticed how inflationary the term ‘expert’ has become nowadays. People are quickly labelled as experts, and any inconvenient opinions or facts can just as quickly be dismissed as false or illegitimate — often without even listening to the other side. At the same time, many people place such strong trust in experts that they no longer dare, or no longer make the effort, to question their views. That troubles me, and Expert is my attempt to express that feeling.”