It is fair to say this intense, intimate song runs on a timeless, relatable truth: we often only realise how important someone was to us after they’re gone. We have all experienced it, or at least we will at some point: that feeling of loss, that person-shaped hole in your life, that missing love we perhaps took for granted or didn’t fight hard enough to keep close.
And even if we find ourselves alone through no fault of our own, with ‘Burn,’ Joe Wheldon neatly captures those conflicted emotions, that soul-shattering sense of loss, that feeling of a heart ripped in two, perfectly.
Sonically, the song takes a fairly straightforward, slow-burning route from spacious folk through punchy roots realms and finally into anthemic atmospheres, but none of this ever gets in the way of the song’s key selling point: Joe’s voice.
Even as the song starts in an almost a cappella, or at least finessed folk way, his masterful voice becomes the focal point, and as he slowly cocoons his poetic message with more rock-infused sounds and big sonic soundscapes, it still stands out above everything around it, emotive, earthy and awesome, every lingering note, every word, even every intake of breath landing with power and pathos.
Rarely has a sense of love, longing and loss been put into song as relatably as this.
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