Opening on what sounds like several televisions running different programs all at once in the distance under the hum of fluorescent lights, the haphazard mess of noise blending into a single track of modern humdrum, Danny Balentine’s “Radio Silence” strikes me as an ambitious piece that sets its mood not only with appropriate chord progression, composition, and lyricism, but with even the methods used to record and produce this track’s instrumental. When the introductory noise slowly fades into an otherworldly droning tonic before suddenly dropping Balentine’s vocals into the mix, I notice the lower-octave harmonies and slight reverb that give the artist’s voice an unnatural yet alluring quality. This contrasts well with the crisp and clear strum of an acoustic guitar in the left-hand audio channel, occasionally underscored with a counterpoint from a muffled-sounding banjo playing in the right-hand audio channel. I unfortunately cannot make out most of the lyrics, and I do wonder if this is intentional to thematically match the “background noise” from the beginning of the track, but what I can make out supports the supplementary quote given with the song describing it as “a nostalgic and yearning pop song that deals with the wake from the loss of someone you loved”:
“(…) Radio silence, fillin’ me up, lookin’ down about it(?) (…)”
“Makin’ money, watchin’ and wishin'(…)”
“It’s radio silence, fillin’ my ears and my eyes, I’m dyin’
She says ‘baby, feel of my heart again, feel of my heart again'”
The first chorus repeats the line “Love from you” as drums now pound stereo with the track’s vocals before a brassy-sounding synth solo carries us into the next stanza.
“(…)City livin’, comin’ up roses, how I miss it
Radio silence, ever since you left me(…)”
In the place of the banjo this time around is the track’s thumping bass, though in time each piece of the track is reintroduced to the point where the music nearly reaches a climax; a tease, truthfully, as it immediately drops to the bridge under high-pass filtering while Balentine’s vocals pan left and right, further playing with the listener’s perception of proximity and sound.
“It’s Radio Silence, fillin’ my ears and my eyes, I’m dyin’
She says, ‘baby, feel of my heart again, feel of my heart again’
Love from you”
Though I could not capture the whole of this track’s lyrics, we can clearly see the pattern of our subject engrossing himself in his craft and becoming successful in it while lamenting his heartbreak and loneliness in what I could hear. This, on its own, would be melancholy enough, though it might not be particularly unique in concept; a sudden spindown of the mix we’d become accustomed to into a grungy, stretched, and noisy version of the same song as it fades out, instrument by instrument. This disorienting effect is often used to convey delirium, confusion, exhaustion, numbness, or a complete physical (or mental) shutdown—with this in mind, Balentine’s ambitious outro for Radio Silence conveys the most visceral part of heartbreak that many other breakup tracks lack. Until one is allowed the space and time to grieve the relationship they have lost with their past love, be it through death or separation, all that they do feels like it only numbs their pain. Or, perhaps, they feel that they are merely going through the motions of life while their grief gnaws at the back of their mind. One can try to turn silence to passion like spinning gold from straw, but the bursts of creativity that inspire the world’s chorus of crying guitars tend to act as stepping stones to helping their authors find closure after coming out the other side of the wringer, so to speak. After the despair, after the numbness, after the depression, after all is said and done, the artist can look back on their lowest moments and depict them in a way that none can look away from, despite the blood it draws from the audience’s hearts.
In conclusion, I would call “Radio Silence” and Danny Balentine’s endeavors within its nearly 4-minute runtime “ambitious” above all else. This term tends to be variable, as not all ambitions succeed, but Balentine’s poetic and inventive audio engineering in the song’s production should put doubting hearts quick at ease. While again, there exist many songs lamenting a lost love in this world, few handle the specific nightmare that is processing grief after a loss, especially not with such care and artistry as Balentine displays. Within recent memory, songs such as The Fray’s “How to Save a Life” or Evanescence’s “My Immortal” certainly touch on aspects of tragedy and the feelings they stir through lyricism and instrumentation, but none that I can recall ever aimed to “show and not tell” the emotional and cognitive rollercoaster that is what follows the loss of a loved one or lover. Balentine’s mumbling vocals brought to synthesized clarity alongside instruments that come and go like shifting scenery in the singer’s surroundings show, through the artist’s lyrics, composition, and audio effects, the struggle to carry on with life like normal before the one chance you’re allowed each day to let it all come crashing down. Let this track remind those in mourning right now that they are not alone, and better yet, there is a future ahead of them where they are able to wake and forget not their loved one, but the pain of their absence.
Written by Alexei Lee
