New track by Saint Rien is a black & white timeless classic. Drawing on the sultry and sumptuous sex appeal of old school soul it draws from a that influence to sell a new world narrative fraught with depression, anxiety, blood, and open heart honesty. It’s a look back at the youth of love through the kaleidoscopically confusing lens of hindsight and personal growth. This is gorgeously intelligent and arousing song writing from an eccentric emerging talent.
The song begins with the crackle and hiss of the needle skipping over an old jazzy little record on vinyl. This forms the bed of the beat but the tone switches to a dreamy fuzzy grain as the other instrumentation and vocals join in. It’s a really interesting little touch and it perfectly sets up the narrative and mood of the music before the first lyric has even dropped.
Vocally Saint Rien is salivating over every word. It’s a great voice with that classical croon but with this slight modern swagger in allowing little regional and accentual flourishes bleed in. It’s emotive and impassioned and it absolutely helps to sell the heart and soul of the song.
The lyrics are filled with witty idiosyncrasies that bring the listener along for the ride with careful presentation. The track presents a slice of insight into the artists mind. The song examines the numb feeling of depression and paralysation in an old life. It dances in the shadows cast by that darkside but it also threads this shining rope of hope through the core that promises of growth, self improvement and better tomorrows.
The beat as we mentioned earlier provides a mirror that catches the glimmer in the poetry of the song and reflects it back in the soundscape. There are several moments where the tone or instrumentation itself changes and marks a shift or evolution in the story.
The track finishes with the repetition of the line “repetition had me feeling like Truman”, another clever choice in terms of the song writing which helps to hammer the heavy hitter status of this lyric in terms of the overall narrative. It’s a cheeky nod, a nice reference, and wit with a wink in terms of a finish, that calls back to the main theme of the piece. A weaker writer would have tried to end with a happy note, Saint Rien goes the other way bringing it back to the bittersweet.
Saint Rien sparkles with promise, the brighest star in the night’s sky reflected on the rippling surface of a cold lake. There are elements of Buckley an inspiration he references in the song itself, and hopefully this creative and talented mind doesn’t walk a similar path. The self care aura that glows in the centre of the song is definitely the message that echoes in the listeners ear, but in sharing the whole story, and the brutal truth of it is a very rare honesty indeed in the modern and mainstream music industry.
There is no sugar coating with Saint Rien, it’s naturally sweet, both sonically and in terms of the sublime song writing.
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Words by Matt Miles
