Cigarettes is the new track from emerging nineteen-year-old multi-cultural multi-instrumentalist Jelly Oshen. The Cairns-based music artist has already generated over 200k streams and attracted a bit of media attention for his alt R&B, indie-pop style. His latest track is the fifth single for the singer-songwriter and will no doubt receive similar responses to his previous releases, attracting nationwide airplay and support from Triple J (Aus), Double J (Aus), 4ZZZ (Brisbane), Coast FM (Cairns), Triple R (Melbourne), Inner FM (Melbourne), 3CR (Melbourne), Hot FM (Mildura), RTR FM (Perth), Bay FM (Byron Bay), PBS FM (Melbourne) and 5GTR (Adelaide).
Cigarettes was produced by Stephen “DubKlaat” Maxwell and mixed by Tommy-John Herbert and penned by Jelly when he was sixteen. The track attempts to strike a smooth balance between the organic and raw, as highlighted in the use of restrained guitar textures, authentic-sounding drums, and an intimacy inducing up-front vocal sound, and a less obvious, though nonetheless present, if not ever-present technological radiance that seems to push the song into a category that is difficult to define.
It’s quirky yet has a melodic weight to the chorus which can almost be considered straight-out pop, yet Jelly’s vocal, when one ignores the robotic double that wearily accompanies it, is quite striking and evocative. Jelly sings like he means it, and that is as refreshing as it is endearing. And the subject of the song, or rather the metaphor or analogy or whatever you want to call it, adopted has a quixotic tendency about it that is equally as disarming and, well, entertaining. Cigarettes works on many levels and should appease a broad audience; there is a hint of the romantic, a touch of the enigmatic and a convincing array of sounds, melodies and performances that give the song a kind of non-conformist edge.
LISTEN TO JELLY OSHEN HERE:
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