ØZWALD is the loose, no-rules side project of Lifehouse’s Jason Wade and Steve Stout, and this one is a team-up with Lucille Two, the dream-pop duo of Trudy Bennett and Jarrin Borg. The story behind it is almost charmingly accidental: Stout was just messing around with a new guitar Fender sent him, the vibe stuck, and Wade built a topline on top of it before Bennett’s vocals and a horn arrangement from Jordan Lehning finished the job.
The song opens on sweet, ear candy guitars that sound hazy and psychedelic, laid over muffled lo-fi drums that stay slow and steady without pushing. The vocals are the real draw, though; they sound so trippy, it feels like several takes stacked on top of each other, sweet and a little salty at once, drenched in reverb and delay until the whole thing sounds huge and far away.
“I gauge my days by how many strangers follow me, meanwhile my closest friends are nowhere to be seen” cuts through all that dreaminess with something a lot more grounded, the quiet ache of chasing attention while the people who actually matter drift off.
A cool but brief moment comes after the second verse, when the beat washes out almost completely, and just the vocals and instrumental melodies carry things for a while, a small but clever touch that makes the whole song feel more intentional. Wade and Bennett sound genuinely great together, and “Comparison Ford” lands as one of those rare collabs where neither voice outshines the other.
ØZWALD
Lucille Two
Written by Toyo Senpai
