Many songwriters need to be more focused on the technicalities of music-making. It is okay if you like to geek out over clever structures, ornate middle eights, bridges, and pre-choruses, but you don’t have to throw everything bar the sonic kitchen sink at the audience to make them respond to your music. Feelings, the debut single from Rose Blood, is the proof of this.
Music should evoke a response in the audience in less tangible ways, through emotional reactions and empathy rather than the musical academia and sonic choices of its creation. And Feelings is all about that. It is an immersive alt-rock experience, one that grabs you through its beguiling hypnotics, its slow-burning, meandering ebbs and flows, its deft blend of ambience sound and intrusive noise fighting for control of the middle ground, through its half-hidden vocals, which become as much an instrument in its their own right as a more direct form of communication.
Dark, sweeping, raw and majestic, beguiling and a little strange, like the soundtrack to an alien landscape. An impressive debut single, a great calling card and the perfect way to leave people intrigued enough to want to know the next part of the artist’s story. Well, I’m in, and I can’t wait to see where the journey goes.
