Baker’s voice, and indeed the additional vocal snippets that accompany it, brings listeners a sense of vulnerability & confidence intertwined. It’s as if there’s absolute adoration at work – alongside of a sheer need to create music & express the feeling through art.
Songwriter
As a songwriter, Palko paints a picture from his own meandering viewpoint – telling stories but always still seeming reflective & personal in his presentation of them. His experience as an artist & musician is clear, and this, his ninth studio album, is one that’s easily worth the time it takes to experience.
The sound is crisp & colorful, and although there are many layers to the soundscape, the original emotion & authenticity of the idea & the human voice have been highlighted at every step. The electronic ambiance takes nothing away from the organic realness & positivity, so you get the best of both worlds.
The lyrics are incredibly poignant, every line is important and says precisely what it means to say. There’s power in this, the power to impact and cause positive change – if only enough people can hear it.
“I would tell artists to become resourceful, be mindful of your business, leverage your network & have fun. Join organizations, listen to music business podcasts. Find the way that works best for you in order to learn & arm yourself with information that can help you in your journey.”
A song that is vulnerable, yet bold and has a strong message, but gets your toes tapping is always the goal when writing!
The video & the song work in unison to portray the idea that it’s totally possible, OK, and encouraged, to speak up in the face of bullying. There’s a shared humanity in all of us, and nobody is out of reach or too disconnected to be approached.
This album is made up of an immeasurable number of details & experimental layers of audio. Barendo strikes as both an artist & musician, able to take any sound or collection of sounds & craft something unusual with them. At the same time, there’s a lot of heart & self-reflection in the writing – the chaos of the music doesn’t replace the desire to connect.
The opening vocals lay out a certain vibe, perhaps purely quirky or characterful, but the instrumentation that follows adds a partly retro partly modern minimalist rhythm and ambiance, and slowly but surely the whole thing starts to brighten up.
It’s no easy feat for an artist to simply sit with an acoustic guitar & captivate an audience with his words & melodies. Will Adams seems to achieve this every time though. This album is one that calms you down to the point of deep thought & genuine self awareness.
This song takes a little from all of the best places in music – crafting before you an immersive experience, one that works on a purely musical level, as well as reaching out to connect with our inner humanness; our less talked about feelings & connections to one another.
Very rarely in life do you come across an artist that has immeasurable levels of talent with an innate star quality that can’t be learned, and just know it’s only a matter of time until they hit it big. Kingsley is one of those artists – his self-titled debut is a master class of the pop-rock genre.