People usually say the word haunting too much when it comes to music descriptors. It’s understandable, as music is hard to wrap language around. To translate what we hear into what we feel and then translate that into what other people read about how we felt when we heard—even writing the sentence is discombobulating.
But, even if it’s overused and used poorly about a lot of art, if Rosier’s new track featuring vocalist Safia Nolin is anything, it’s haunted. From the first three seconds of that dissonant paralysis-demon chording, we know we’re in trouble. Then the downstroked acoustic guitar, the entrance of the vocals—you may want to burn some sage.
Je vis, je vis sur une terre étrangère
Depuis que je n’ai plus de mère
Even for those who don’t know French, you can feel the despair and the loneliness in this song. Every inch of the recording, every choice made with reverb and reversed delay, the vocal performance, it all puts us in the room with the ghosts.
I live, I live in a foreign land
Since I lost my mother
Jesus Christ.
The production is masterfully done, I wouldn’t want a thing changed. The balance of everything is perfect; the swells of ambient textures come in exactly when they need to and leave the moment they’re not needed anymore. If Rosier ever comes to Atlanta, two things will happen:
- It will probably snow hard
- I’ll be buying tickets to hear this live.
Written by Willow Stonebeck
