Lilac Thief is the “stage name” for Adelaide (Australia) singer-songwriter Joshua Julian. We’ve been listening to his single, Take Care, here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.
Take Care is a retrospective love song; a song that simultaneously accepts, mourns, and celebrates a love that has come to its natural end point.
Take Care is the debut single from Lilac Thief. Joshua Julian is a new artist and it looks to us as though he’s planning to take his career pretty seriously, whilst also having some fun doing it! The accompanying video for Take Care has him wandering through all kinds of spectacular scenery, beaches, flower gardens, marinas and even an underground parking structure! Finishing the video with him and his dog just sitting around playing together.
There’s a great stereo effect on the layered vocals on this track. The vocals are smooth and gentle and with very occasional distant backing vocals.
The gentle, picked guitar throughout the track is well played and interesting to listen to. Perhaps a little dominated by the electronic drums which, to us, kind of masked the quality guitar playing.
A shaker joins the song after a couple of minutes, together with some interesting synth and pad sounds (we couldn’t quite place). There’s a momentary section where the drums and bass disappear, but for the most part, the song remains steady throughout.
Take Care feels like the kind of song that you might have as background music. There is little development and minimal changes between verses and choruses. Standing at around 4 minutes long, it is unlikely to be picked up for commercial air play, but may perhaps grab some internet radio play and local air play.
For a debut single, it really is a promising start. We’d like to see Lilac Thief work a little on defining the different sections of songs and making sure that there is progression and rise and fall to ensure the listener is gripped right to the last second.
From a production stance, we’d suggest a cut in the kick drum where it’s peaking at around 115Hz and a boost of the top 3 octaves to add a little more life and brightness into the track. Again, as a debut, this is really promising self production and we hope that Lilac Thief takes all of our comments in the positive spirit they are intended. We are excited to hear of his progress on future songs.
Take Care is a gentle, slightly melancholic amalgamation of modern sounding drum loops, classy picked guitar and a sweet smooth layered vocal. Great lo-fi bedroom pop/ acoustic singer-songwriter.