Answer-phone.
Pause. Beep.
Pause.
“… (Static) Don’t you recognise one of my silences by now?”
Click, brrr…
This song is Romance, good, bad, all the layers that exist in between. Heartache, heartbreak, desire, redemption.
The nightrider riffs and neo-retro pop sensibilities are primed to make it an iconic 80s-inspired Electronica-Retro-Waved-Power-Ballad.
A dreamy synth excursion with emotive restrained arpeggios opens the track, with tape-sampled snares, dusty kicks and deviously reverbed hits.
The instrumentation is sparse leaving space for the dramatic vocal to lean into. You think you are hearing more than you are, the crisp production invites you in to investigate the empty space so that every detail is fawned over.
Ollie Wride might just have given one of the strongest most memorable vocals you are likely to here this side of 84, a ghostly howl that seeps into you in a reverbed wash, the piercing strength of his tone managing to grip you throughout. He has the youthful exuberance of a child expressing something for the first time whilst belting out stadium styled vocals with power and precision.
There are parts that fuse into the background entirely, a poem in rhyme and verse. The silence offers licence to invent and fantasize; It reminds you of lost love, of love worth fighting for. A stranger whose presence in your life has made you their stranger.
A truly iconic track that simultaneously salutes and transcends the genre.
