From London artist Mono XL comes a gorgeous and deeply nostalgic track, “Brown Eyes.” Lush with pulsing 80s synths, big propulsive drums, and larger-than-life guitars, the song is seething with anguish and overflowing with creativity.
The primary section of this song is frankly some of the most satisfyingly beautiful music you’ll hear. It’s all very 80s new wave/synth pop, both in instrumentation and aesthetic – the sort of empathetic-yet-optimistic vibe you’d expect from a UK artist. The chorus is an incredible explosion of what seems like a dozen different emotions. All the instruments merge into a gigantic collage of beauty, wonder, and majesty, punctuated by bright guitars that sound like shimmering clouds. Singer Mike de Lis pours on the bittersweetness with his passionate and soothing vocals, elevating this track to a level of enchantment that’s almost unfathomable. The entire thing is very therapeutic, and even before the first verse kicks off you can feel your mood has begun to shift.
After a few verse-chorus repetitions, the song suddenly and unexpectedly shifts into a heavily sluggish groove, an extended coda reminiscent of Jeff Lynne’s Out of the Blue-era ELO. It’s as if we’ve just broken through into outer space – you can quite literally hear the space between the notes in contrast to the multi-layered atmosphere of the previous section. The music begins to build as the drums begin to fill more and more space, an elastic synth sets the mystifying tone with bouncy chords, and electric arpeggios are hurled into deep space like alien transmissions. The psychedelic energy and de Lis’ focus on creative aesthetic experimentation rather than traditional pop songwriting is so refreshing and a welcome change to the monotony that we often find on the radio.
This Mono XL ‘one-man-band’ outfit is very intriguing and seems to be turning into something substantial that will bring listeners something fresh. Their debut studio album is set to be released sometime later this year, and “Brown Eyes” will certainly aid in building more and more anticipation for it in the coming months.
Written by Tim Clark
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