If you needed a chorus to save your life,
Sombr
would be a safe bet. That much becomes apparent not a minute into the curly haired singer/songwriter's breakout single, ¿Back to Friends¿; ¿How can we go back to being friends, when we just shared a bed?¿ runs the vocalist's caustic grief, a sentiment underscored by sparse pianos and a fuzzy crowd of guitars. It straddles simplicity and intensity in a way that few manage and takes on a gravitational pull of its own.
It's a trait that remains a superpower across the young vocalist's
Warner
debut. Each track of the wryly titled
I Barely Know Her
is spearheaded by a grand, magnetic chorus brought to culmination by the New York vocalist's dexterous, impassioned vocal style. His pleas break warmly through the scratchy melodrama of opener ¿crushing,¿ add a pensive brightness to the strutting verses of ¿12 to 12,¿ and soar into devastation on the excellent ¿canal street.¿ At times, this strength proves a little easy to lean on, with choruses rushing back around slightly too quickly on ¿i wish I knew how to quit you¿ and ¿we never dated" -- though with the harmonized agony of the latter's chorus, it's easy to see why.
The album's core thread runs around heartbreak, and nowhere does that manifest more impactfully than on the aforementioned ¿canal street.¿ A five-minute, hands-in-pockets walk through heartache, the album's centerpiece track traces New York's Canal St. with a surprisingly concrete set of eyes, cycling back to its face-numbing ¿none of them are you¿ on a bold album high point. Similarly poignant touches make a diamond out of ¿undressed,¿ which mourns the reluctance to ¿get undressed for a new person all over again,¿ and dreads ¿the children of another man¿hav[ing] the eyes of the girl I won't forget.¿ Of course, there are still a few growing pains here -- an overstretched ¿You're a -- ten¿ chorus on ¿dime,¿ a clinking ¿Do you feel me too in your heart, or only when I touch your parts?¿ on ¿come closer¿ -- but they're quickly lost in the melodramatic spool of the subsequent ¿we never dated¿ and ¿undressed.¿
The emblazoned red mark that comes with social media virality has proven the death of many young artists' careers, but
dodges the brand with grace; on
, the 20-year-old star takes a magnetic first step. ~ David Crone