For Chicago’s Sativa Brothers, “City RIP” is the first chapter of a project decades in the making. Brothers Lou and Phil Morelli and vocalist Tom Sullivan have roots in the city’s underground rock scene of the 1970s and early ’80s, and the band is built around songs they wrote in the 1980s but never finished, alongside new material. In Lou Morelli’s words, the band that never was finally is. The single came out on October 30th and was recorded over more than a year across four studios in Nashville, Chicago, and Maryland, and produced by Lou Morelli.
The song itself is an urban rock fable about a man with nowhere left to go, who heads to the city not to chase a dream but to disappear into the streets. Nostalgia won’t feed him, and memories won’t pay the bills, so to survive he needs some love, whether that is compassion, a helping hand, or just enough change from a stranger. The band says it was written to reflect the Morelli brothers’ early experience with a homeless man.
This is a band that clearly has incredible chemistry with one another. The rhythm work is tight and is actually very melodic, not rhythmically bombastic for the sake of it. Together, Phil Morelli’s keys, Lou Morelli’s guitars, and the drums and bass create the perfect skyline for Tom Sullivan’s vocals to soar through. The band also has great dynamics. They’re rocking the whole time, obviously, but there is a great sense of dynamics because when they really hit it, and the backup vocals and keys go crazy, you can really feel the added intensity.
The members bring a long history from cult-followed Chicago acts including Blind Ambition, Myth, Third Rail and The Resin Diggers. Morelli says they aren’t trying to recreate the music of that era, only to take what they loved about it and make something fresh and relevant, and the band says it is writing new songs alongside the old unfinished ones. With that approach, “City RIP” reads as the opening of something that is meant to keep going.
