Tuesday 26 April 2016

Single: Silences - Breathless

Silences Breathless



Silences - Breathless


- Review by Noël Duplaa

Info: Silences, the Armagh based five piece band centred around singer/songwriter Conchúr White, have released their new single 'Breathless'. Building on past releases, notably previous single 'There’s a Wolf', (which amassed over 50,000 Soundcloud streams, and received plays from Annie Mac, Huw Stephens and Phil Taggart), the new track acts as an excellent appetite-whetter for their current EP, Luna which is available for purchase through http://silencesmusic.com/store/

There’s a horrible tension, both musically and lyrically at the core of this song - as frontman and main songwriter Conchúr White notes, “It’s about trying your best but wondering will it ever be enough.”  And this stress is palpable from the song’s first line, “I spilled my guts for nothing as much as a flake of denial.”  The ominous symbolism of the verses gives way to the aching, heartbleeding question in the chorus: “Am I ever gonna make you honest?/Am I ever gonna leave you breathless?”  Gently unfolding in XX style hushed minimalism, the five piece band mine this tension for all it’s worth.  Delicate piano and delayed guitars build on a skeletal electronic beat, as hushed harmonies ebb and flow until the bass finally begins to show the strain and leads the band off a cliff, with the song’s sudden dynamic descent into chaos releasing all the barely restrained turmoil like water rushing through a crack in a dam.

With their three released EPs, Silences have proved themselves as capable of finding power in the quietest fingerpicked guitar line as in the raging torrents of a fully unleashed five piece band, but their increasing mastery of the dynamic shifts between these two elements sees them staking their place as that rarest of things - a band as happy obsessing over the minutiae of production textures as the joy of loud guitars cutting loose; a headphones band with the muscle to slay a main stage.


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