There’s something really refreshing about an artist who is willing to follow their own path completely. Someone who is not tied to genres, to opinions, to social constructs, to opinions of music. We found this today in Robby & The Secrets first single, Bones, from their forthcoming album.
This is an experimental piece of music. A cinematic and atmospheric soundscape with no rules. A song drenched in reverbs without it being too much or muddying the overall sound of the track. With minimal instrumentation, Bones is focussed very much on the vocals. And that’s not surprising considering the quality of the vocal performance. There are moments of musical theatre in the vocalist that make us assume he may be classically trained. There’s several places in the song that reminded us of many of the tracks from Jesus Christ Superstar.
We’re also very much reminded of Geoff Tate (Queensryche), David Bowie, Roger Waters and Fish. There’s a real progressive element to the track that also brought to mind Fish’s Marbles album from the early 2000s.
Bones has some beautiful, positively euphoric swells on guitars with some fantastically placed backing vocals. The wailing background vocals near the end of the track reminded us, obviously, of Pink Floyd.
There’s some great panning in the track to maintain interest for the headphone listeners and the use of shakers and very light percussion is masterful. We particularly like how the track manages to rise and fall so expertly without any kind of drum track.
Not necessarily a commercial release song, we can very much see this song doing well if the artist wished to seek out a sync deal. It feels like something that may be in the background of a slightly uncomfortable scene.
Bones is a song about Humanity’s urge to be with other humans. To find special people to share one’s life with and to feel love.
From a production perspective, this is very well mixed and mastered. Be mindful of the fact that, if played on a mono radio station (yes there are still plenty out there!) the chugging guitar will create a lot of phase cancellation which will remove most of that beautiful warmth it is creating. For my own personal taste, I give the top 2 octaves and bottom 2 octaves a slight shelf boost to make the overall track a little brighter and warmer. There’s also a frequency in the low mids on the swirling guitar that is clashing with the vocals in places which can easily be resolved.
We think Bones might be our track of the day! There’s something really endearing and inviting about it that took us out of our comfort zones. It swells and rises to euphoric states in places and leaves the listener feeling both positive and challenged. Great stuff. We look forward to hearing the rest of the album when it comes out later this year.