When a pop song is centered on vibrant vocal harmonies, you’ve got to have a strong singer driving the hook home, which is exactly what “Promised Land” has going for this February. With the incredibly talented Cory Driscoll in the middle of this mix, his intimate relationship with the instrumentation behind him takes over the spotlight not long after he starts to sing. His voice is admittedly powerful enough to anchor the melodic elements in this piece, but he doesn’t stop with his display of muscularity there, utilizing a folky foundation from the guitar parts to emphasize pastoral notes in the music we might just as soon have overlooked.
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The lyrics aren’t too ambitious in “Promised Land,” and, to be frank, I don’t think they need to be – truth be told, I think an elaborate lyrical construct would have got in the way of this curiously progressive structure playing out as seamlessly as it does. There are two forms of thoughtful pop, and to me, this is the kind that invites us closer with its surreal qualities rather than relying on a bright cosmetic scheme alone when trying to win the audience over.
Rhythm serves as a stabilizer for Driscoll’s verses in “Promised Land,” which is a lot better than bringing in a synthetic component to balance out the melodic instrumentation with the presence of our man’s vocal. He takes up plenty of space in the arrangement with his dynamic voice, but he never comes off as self-centered; contrarily, there’s a selflessness to his attitude – especially in the first half of the song – that winds up bleeding into the narrative here relentlessly.
The percussion does a fine job of not only framing the verses but contributing a pulse to them, which isn’t a detail a lot of this singer/songwriter’s contemporaries have been considering when developing projects similar to this one. Cory Driscoll knows when and where to be conservative in his arrangement of “Promised Land,” but at no point is he bleaching a harmony simply to make a hook play a little smoother. There’s no need to embellish, and nothing really in need of a surface-level boost.
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“Promised Land” feels like a new high point in this player’s career, and when compared to the efforts he’s turned in over the past years, I think it’s also one of the more mature compositions he’s managed to submit thus far. Driscoll has always had quite a bit of talent, even going back to his very first single, but he’s more conscious about refining it here than he has been previously, while also alluding to a comfortability in the studio that can only do good things for his campaign moving forward. There’s a lot that we can learn about his artistry just from listening to “Promised Land,” chiefly that he isn’t plateauing creatively at this juncture of his story but instead diversifying his output and perhaps becoming the sharpest songwriter and performer he has ever been. All in all, this is a big success for his discography.
Clay Burton