SPOTIFY: open.spotify.com/track/5M0CDx19b9E3K3bvWkULOo
On “Head on the Tracks,” indie pop phenomenon Trevor Drury breaks the mold and redefines his artistry with a sharp reverence that few – if any – of his contemporaries on the American side of the Atlantic possess. Over the holiday season, Drury’s “Blue Christmas” kept us as warm as a winter’s fire would on a cold and blustery night in the snow, but this spring, the “Jealousy” singer is pulling out the big guns and returning to what he does best – belting out magnetic melodies against a patient piano and sets of gilded grooves that will leave any diehard pop aficionado begging for more.
There’s a lot of color to behold in this rhythm, which is sensuously directed by a pendulous percussive track that contrasts beautifully with the springy reverb clinging onto the vocal. Drury navigates the grooves with the prowess of an orchestral conductor, never falling between the ridges in the tempo or losing his place in the more imagistic and complex verses. He’s always two steps ahead of everyone else in “Head on the Tracks,” and his swaggering style of play reflects an infectious confidence onto everything that we hear on the instrumental side of the song as well.
YOU TUBE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmpJPDAGZ4o
The piano that greets us at the onset of this single is aching and rife with emotionality even before Drury starts to give it a little bit of poetic context with his words, and thanks to this muscular master mix, its voice continues to contribute to the larger narrative of the song just as much as T.D.’s does. While most of the pop music currently occupying the top slots on the Billboard charts have tended to shy away from balancing the vocal track with the texture in the music itself, “Head on the Tracks” isn’t restrained by the same artistic inhibitions in the least. Its composer clearly has much loftier goals than merely soundtracking nightclubs and birthday parties; for someone like Trevor Drury, such pedestrian wants shouldn’t just disinterest him – in actuality, they’re beneath him.
“Head on the Tracks” is classically stylized, but it features a really futuristic finish in its scooped equalization that tethers it more to the postmodern pop movement than it does the developing scene of groan-inducing retro revivalists. It’s normally something that we hear a lot more commonly among heavy metal bands, but the lack of middle in this single actually brings out a lot of the understated nuances in Drury’s voice that, frankly, we wouldn’t have had the pleasure of appreciating were they not presented to us in this experimental fashion.
Sophisticated, smart and sexy, “Head on the Tracks” is an undebatable hit for indie pop this spring and some of the very best material that we’ve ever heard from Trevor Drury, period. I’ve been following this young man for a hot minute now, and I must say that I’ve been increasingly impressed with each one of his releases. He’s learned, in a surprisingly short amount of time no less, how to capture emotions through his music that some artists would spend the whole of their careers trying to understand, and while I don’t think that he’s anywhere near reaching his peak, I certainly wouldn’t say that this latest release doesn’t raise the bar for both him and his chosen scene.
INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/trevordrurymusic/
Clay Burton