Vincent Yelle – Hydra
Maybe it’s not all a myth, and, indeed, great truths can be found in great silences. Certainly, the greatest musical artists, when in need of discovering the keys to some of the great riddles of life, have gone back to making the softest kind of music they could.
And, while there’s a trend right now to reinterpret boisterous rock tunes or arena-pleasing pop tunes in a slow, mysterious way, those compositions rarely hold many personal truths. The vast majority of them are just slogans that drunk convert goers can sing.
What’s the opposite direction? A musical world of near-silent meditation. That’s where Vincent Yelle is running toward. And while where the road’s bound to end and what’s going to be there is unclear, Yelle is considerate enough to entertain us while riding with him.
“Hydra” is an exploration of grief and a way to ask some resounding “Whys?” to a world that rarely makes sense and often bosses us around. But the sound of the record is not mournful. Melodies dance, one after another, beautifully and Yelle’s singing, while fragile, feels life-affirming. It’s easy to enjoy this. Still, you’ll need to be quiet, need to breathe this all in, and like the artist, you’ll have to hope that all of this will make sense.
Forager – Pomeranian
Musical put-downs, let’s be honest, are either delicious or bitter and embarrassing. The artists who end up taking a chance on these kinds of songs, you’d assume, either have to be desperately angry at someone or desperate for some attention.
When they work, put-down songs become emblematic of the performer who delivered them. People will ask for years about what inspired them, fans will create theories, and, if you’re Carly Simon, the artist can even auction out the truth.
Still, it’s passion that is in short supply in the music world nowadays, just directly behind musical sophistication. This is why Forager takes a chance on both these things and, for the most part, gets repaid for following those instincts.
Forager’s “Pomeranian” is a sophisticated piece of pop music, heavily influenced by neo-soul and 80s synth pop. The production and the orchestration are great. But, of course, it’s the lyrical subject matter, in which the unworthy object of the singer’s affection gets compared to a pampered dog that’s bound to stick around the longest. Put-down songs must leave a strong impression if they’re to be taken seriously, and this one does.
