Melbourne based musician Sam Michael Trowse has just released I See You (Falling From Grace), an alternative indie rock track that is a superb blend of contemporary and quintessential influences, straddling the line between accessibility and exclusivity with an anomalous blend of rock, art pop and punk swagger.
Embarking on a solo career after many years playing in various bands across the country, Sam’s debut is a blistering and all-encompassing meditation on positivity, as he says about the lyric, ‘The song is about positive thinking – if someone has a fall from grace, it’s not the end of the world they can pick themselves up and start again.
The lyrics describe the need to find love even in fear and that this is a form of positive thinking’. The track begins unassumingly with a musical background vocal motif reminiscent of a 60s era pop tune but soon transforms into a mix of jangly guitar, layered voices and a rhythm section that establishes the driving foundation for the rest of the song.
An intro chorus sets the tone, which is one of the many restrained hooks of the song, articulated from a series of long notes, a swaggering vocal performance from Sam and some eclectic mood-enhancing atmospherics hovering in the background. The chorus is followed by a tag, bridging the gap between the more pop-centric melodic flourishes and the verses to come.
The first verse introduces a slight change in chord configurations, emphasising the darker aspect of the song’s heart, a melody line that’s augmented by Sam’s wry tonal variances and a lone guitar line seemingly responding to the emotional unveiling, mirroring not only the sentiment but the mood of the song. With an arrangement that deviates from the norm, another chorus tag appears, with its use of sweet notes conjuring a feeling of yearning that underscores the overall mood once again.
After a second chorus, the song segues into a bridge, a sparse section with a synth bubbling beneath a more muted vocal from Sam, though one that contains some critical lyrical passages. From there it builds into another chorus and a surprise stop-start conclusion.
I See You is an exciting alt-indie track which is sure to get added to playlists everywhere.