It is an indicator of just how clever an arranger, composer, and music maker Nathaniel Earl is that he can put together a song so accessible yet so hard to describe, at least not with the usual genre tags and sound bites. Indie-infused, cosmic-dance, cinematic, electro-art-pop? See, tags are hard, and even one as clumsy as that doesn’t really cover everything. Let’s call it progressive pop and leave it at that.
The second single from his album, What Follows What Remains, “i’m alone,” forms part of a suite of songs that act as a cathartic reckoning with themes of identity, grief, and self-healing in the aftermath of personal tragedy.
And if the lyrics are powerful and poignant, the music that carries them is no less so. Synth-driven this may be, but Earl builds these washes of electronica into tantalising tones and intertwining textures and then runs chiming guitars and digital beats, layers of sonics and subtle musical motifs through the heart of it—the perfect blend of analogue and digital, a decisive dance of electronic vibes and organic soundscapes.
Ebbing and flowing for just under six minutes, Earl has allowed himself plenty of space to explore many different ideas in one song—from elegant understatement to eloquent sonic crescendos, from cinematic sweeps to addictive dance vibes. And as the song fades out into the ether on a wash of heavenly vocals, delicate piano and ambient drifts, you realise that you have just experienced something rather extraordinary.
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