PICK OF THE DAY

I have this interest in the concept of A-B testing. The experimenting of two different forms of content or two different concepts presented to groups of people to develop an understanding of what will be gravitated toward. What sells better. It’s a back channel planning to draw people toward something with a deeper purpose of gain. A utilization of presentation with an intention for drawing out information the subjects may never realize has happened to them. But suddenly items, or services appeal back to the test subjects without realizing they answered the question to begin with.

Ben Seretan does not partake in this experimenting, but presents two sides of one mind in forms of music that could be considered polar choices. The only difference is the system in which all of Seretan’s creation works flows in one channel, right in front of any listener that plays any song.

A direct example of this separate but braided pairing is the canyon between what happens on last year’s torch in the middle of the biggest field you’ve ever seen of “Allora,” and here now on the first single of a fresh album. “they wanna hear another heater” speaks through the title in this mindset of maybe someone picking Seretan’s world up for the first time in the guitar churning, wailing and wobbling of all that “Allora” splashed and mashed across the canvas, and then there’s this wide open void of something entirely different on this new single.

It sounds like the first 5 seconds are silent. Only sounds like that. There’s something pooling like the foot of a microscopic germ testing the temperature of lake water. And as that micro ripple develops into a mass of miniature piano notes and sounds that hang in the air like a fog that can’t wash away, Seretan builds a new city on the other side of the world. A cold city. A humid city. A city without any addresses, exactly. “they wanna hear another heater” glides in like the silence of just the wing on a plane landing at night and the lights are blinking out the window, but the wing doesn’t flap, or swivel, just let’s down easy, so people can pile out of the cabin and into cars and houses and beds and chairs and restaurants and booths and conversations and never think about that wing again. Off somewhere else, letting people go somewhere else.

The most intensely important piece of Seretan’s sound, and development of that sound, is that whether there is singing like the bottom of a boat about to capsize, or the soft sounds of pianos and breath and distant birds and a through line of humming, it is all inside of the system that isn’t about A and B, or which side of Seretan you like better. It’s about how all of this is continuing to pile into one single monument that we don’t yet fully realize. It’s only in Seretan’s head, in the climb, in the structuring, and right now we’re looking out over a valley that’s teeming with life less visible at first glance, but happening all the same. Just look down a little longer. Or up. Find a wing going somewhere inside of this.

(Sound As Language)

Spain’s Elena Nieto consistently creates melodies that gleam atop guitars and drums kicking like the legs of rabbits running from something bigger. It’s a steady pace of unrelenting perfection in hooks that echo off the walls once the song ends. After the straight line of direct hits on 2022’s, “Duplo,” whatever would come next would expectedly stay steady in easy tracks that sound like the tallest buildings reflecting the brightest sun.

Beginning 2025, Yawners (the name Nieto puts these frosted bashers out under) drops a new track titled “1 de enero,” translated: January 1st. A year starter that drops into immediate contention as one of the best songs I’ll probably hear this year.

“1 de enero,” deals through the end of a relationship and the changing of a new year. It may be a fresh start, but the past is still the spectered hand holding on to somewhere in the background that never fully fades. The concept Nieto drills to on the chorus works in the mindset that she has no interest in responding to a past relationship in any way, but still wants to kiss this broken up person at midnight on New Year’s Eve. A conflicted scaling of chipped edges gripping somewhere it shouldn’t be able to hold on to.

Guitars chug along like a car idling outside on a cold day. Drums hit like a snare a thousand feet tall, and Nieto harmonizes with her own voice in easy gusts of January chill coming in through the crack in the window. The bass tone itself is worth listening to the song for, but the way it runs a bit up and down around the frame of the chorus makes for a low end shifting like a single tectonic plate moving when this relationship ended. Nieto sings with the steady confidence of someone who has this whole picture masterminded and implements every angle needed to make yet another immediate track, as up close as it can be in exactly what anyone wants to hear.

The chiming in the background as the chorus is sung out over and over to the end holds a certain pain in the ringing. The year is new, the old is following, and the this song is smashing through the side of a wall that once meant something to someone that can’t be back in this same room ever again…most likely.

(Counter Intuitive)