After interviewing Tim Spriggs back in May, following the release of his single Where I Came From, his EP Something Else finally crossed our path this week. It’s a five-track playlist of partly acoustic, melodic grunge-crossover and classic rock escapism, featuring some powerful ideas, and the songwriting is fantastic.
Once In A Lifetime is the opener, a quickly captivating song with a skillfully progressive melody that meanders and evolves in a creative, satisfying way. The story-line intrigues throughout, seeming deeply personal yet accessible to the wider, thoughtful audience at the same time. The song’s hook and all that leads towards it is brilliant, refreshingly complex and well crafted. The song has the addictive qualities of a classic.
Where I Came From takes you down a gentle acoustic pathway and inspires hope and positivity from the offset. Nothing is ever quite as you might expect it to be though – as is the Tim Spriggs way. The song’s hook is superb – the verses held a lot of brightness in themselves, but that chorus is so unique in its redirection of the melody and the overall serious tone it seems to present. There’s something incredibly thoughtful and expressive about this moment in the song, it’s another cleverly addictive bit of performance that mesmerizes as it pours through. Spriggs writes from a notably personal perspective, but it’s intriguing and accessible all at once – as if he’s somehow speaking on those things we’d been thinking about, but hadn’t been able to put into words. This is a brilliant song that I’ve found myself revisiting several times over.
As They Say thickens the mix, raises the energy higher and adds a layer of fuzz for a slightly rockier vibe. The whole thing feels fuller, heavier, more raw perhaps – like an alternative or indie-rock classic. It seems like something that matters, you get a sense of meaning from it much more than simply the anthemic aura implied buy the weight. The latter half sees an epic moment of vocal melody and lyrical questioning that’s again unpredictable but somehow perfectly appropriate.
The EP’s title track offers a striking level of acoustic delicacy after what came before The space and the softness hits with impact. It’s a gorgeous song with some stunning guitar work and a heart-melting, entrancing hook section. It evolves to be a beautiful moment of brightness and creativity intertwined. These songs are the best of the best it seems. Every track starts off good and progresses to be great, if not even better than that. A live show would be a must if the opportunity arose.
The End Of The Year brings the EP to a finish, though to phrase it that way takes a little from the depth and power of the song in itself. The concept is fairly compelling, and the recording style, the authentic vinyl crackle, and the apparent distance between the singer and the listener, makes it feel a little like a long lost classic. It’s a simple song, minimalist in set-up, different to everything that came before but classically true to the ideas and the general feel of this EP. The lyrics grow more poetic and considerate as the song moves along, and the music remains subtle – just the voice and the guitar, for barely longer than two minutes. It leaves you with a fairly overwhelming wall of silence when it comes to and end. The intensity of the collection leaves a notable mark when all is said and done. Absolutely worth a download – superb songwriting.
Find & follow Tim Spriggs on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud & Instagram. Visit his Website for more information.
