Currently signed to New Jersey-based independent music label Kidokoro Records, singer-songwriter Edward Phillips is officially back at it, doing what he loves most since 2015’s House of Natural: bringing his creative visions into fruition. This year, he has released a handful of “fevery” gems, most recently dropping “Something Beautiful” this month.
Coined as “a somber slop-ballad” by the artist himself, the tune’s production and writing resonates with many of the world’s all-time favorite sad boys past and present such as Bright Eyes, Elliott Smith, and Alex G.
The recording, instrumentation, and placement of subtle details throughout this effort are beautifully tailored to hug Phillips’ lyrics and memorable melody. Clean, twinkly guitars pulsate behind the ebb and flow of the song’s rhythm, extracting rawness atop their lighter strummed counterparts. The piano, soft synths, and dampened drums maintain this sense of gentleness as the rather bleak orchestration poises with the crooning.
Despite the doleful nature of this genre of sound, there is a lot of love and light that shines through the harmonics and subject of this piece. “Try to make it as we go/ But it’s all unusual/ In the dark I watched you glow/ It was something beautiful… There’s a reason to be proud/ cuz your love is beautiful,” assures a shaky-voiced Edward Phillips early on.
Stream “Something Beautiful” below.
Anjali Rose Kumar is a musician, videographer, and creative freak based in Brooklyn, NYC. Anjali is learning to cope with a self-imposed quarantine in NYC’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic by spending her hours recording music in her bedroom, watching her unemployment leave her bank account, and embarking on a newly revived love of writing. In fact, when Anjali was 10 years old she was convinced she would live her life as a writer, however, she would often confuse her teachers by making up her own vocabulary and therefore buried the interest for 15 years. Cheers to the new years ahead of us. You can find out more about Anjali here.
