Trying to stand out in a world of guitar-slinging folk-popsters and would-be hipster troubadours when you make music with just voice and guitar is a challenge. Sure, you can try to throw in all manner of clever noodling, overly verbose lyrics, sonic tricks, and faddish moves, but that really gets in the way. All you can really do is write the song you want to write and rely on your songwriting chops and sonic persona to help get it over the line of the listener’s consciousness. And if you wonder how that is done, ‘My River’ is a great example.
For the first half of the song, you might worry that M3G has played it too straight… that the song’s lilting understatement and spaciousness won’t be enough, but slowly you realise that other forces are starting to come to bear on the song. Disembodied vocals begin to haunt the spaces between; her voice finds those more unique and characterful deliveries, atmospheres grow; tension builds. This is the calm before the admittedly most gentle of sonic storms, and as the song rises out of its lowest and loveliest lulls, the musical river bursts its banks; sonic waves and washes eddy and pool, ebb and flow, and then the moment passes. This is what it has all been leading to.
Sometimes simplicity is the best. Simplicity can reveal elegance, tastefulness, style and seduction; simplicity is never forced; it is allowed to flow naturally, and simplicity never goes out of style. Less is more? Abso-flippin’-lutley.
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