For such a deft and minimalist alt-pop sound, there is a lot to talk about with Adrielle Bow Belle’s latest single, “Icey Roads.” But that is what all the best artists can do: draw the most intriguing, most thought-provoking lines across the musical landscape with the deftest and most delicate of strokes.
Here, she takes a subversive approach to R&B, using it to plot a meandering, mesmerizing path through pop infectiousness and indie cool, spacious soulfulness and lyrical poignancy. Beats are sparse, guitars often blistering yet distant, her vocals build into an anthemic choral soundscape in their own right, and numerous brief sonic motifs and tasteful interludes help build, color, and shape the overall sound. And if each element feels like a gossamer and sonically slight building block, the result is mesmerizing sonic architecture.
And as powerful as the music is, the lyrics are even more so, poignant and poised and, sadly, still all too pertinent to our times. Exploring issues of “colorism, surveillance, and exclusion,” she reminds us that for some, the American Dream is just as unattainable, deliberately so, as it has always been, that the promise of a better life is only a possibility for some, and that the cards are still stacked in a certain way by the powers that be, dependent on color, creed, and class.
And if you want to really revel in the lyrical message, and you should, there is a purely a capella version of the song available too.
Given some of the setbacks, the cracks and the reversals, again often deliberate and calculated, the lack of unity and tolerance and empathy and, well, love, plainly visable in, not just America but the world in general, today, “Icey Roads” is both a timeless echo of the voice of the wronged and a timely reminder of how far we still have to go as a society.
Website
Facebook
Soundcloud
YouTube
Instagram
