Shaylee – Audrey
Audrey is a mysterious song of grief. It washes over listeners like paint that’ll never come off. The success of Shaylee’s single rests in mainly two things. On the one hand, it captures the panic and horror of truly empathizing with somebody else’s suffering.
But, besides the subtle songwriting techniques, there’s the matter of the artist’s musical chops. Audrey begins in a gentle singer-songwriter manner where the acoustic guitar dominates the proceedings. But, then, just like an overly ambitious post-rock exercise, it begins introducing more and more musical elements, created by instruments all played by Shaylee, that transform the song into a tremendous, blazing wall of sound.
This is giganto-folk created by someone with a clear vision and the capacity to execute it faultlessly.
Grand Commander – Journey to Wherever We May Go
The power of pop music is waning. And, so, the many songwriters required to write a pop hit nowadays try to jumble and reassemble old formulas in a bid to keep things fresh. But, once in a while, a pop song of immense, almost naive, purity will find its way to us and completely disarm us.
From the gently plucked guitar to the straight vocal melodies, to the hopeful lyrics, there’s nothing particularly eccentric about Grand Commander’s Journey to Wherever We May Go. However, because it is so earnestly tender and uninterested to disguise fear or pain behind fancy words or experimental sounds, it ends up sounding heartbreaking.
Then again, while clearly a pop song, Grand Commander’s music may be rooted in something that most alt-rock fans can agree on, the greatness of the Velvet Underground’s quieter numbers. It’s art-rock disguising itself as straightforward folk music.
