An Honest and Vulnerable New Song From November Dog
The latest release from November Dog brings out a smooth, inviting warmth that invites you into a sentiment and understanding that comes from a very personal perspective, and one that feels strangely relatable to some.
The song starts with an electric but clean guitar with a beautiful tone, and it's played with a bit of swagger or soul. Sitting just on top of that is a set of keys that has a very unique tone and sound playing an overlapping main melody over the guitar chords, which I found even more sort of inviting. The tones of the clean guitar playing with a little bit of soul, and that unique key hook, were something that really grabbed me, and I found it smart that they just put that right at the start of the song.
Because of this, you start to get a feel for the mood that the song delivers, which, honestly, is a little bit sullen but again, very understandable for some people.
Although it is warm and inviting and its tonality, the progressions are slightly sad, cinematic, and again, emotionally bound.
This is a song that expresses the feeling of misunderstanding or trying so hard to be with someone who doesn't understand you or what you're doing. It's like feeling unseen.
This is something that people can understand. A lot of us feel unseen in certain relationships or situations, and this band does an outstanding job of just expressing the motion that comes along with that.
Now, it's not overdone. It's balanced so that you get a real grasp for the situation and of the feeling that the singer is giving off. The sentiment is right there in your face, and the more the song unfolds, the deeper into it you get.
The soundscape of this track is very particular as well. Along with these vocals that have a certain heart to them, expressing all that emotion lyrically, the clean electric guitars and keys, you also have live percussion, but the way they recorded or mixed it gives them a distance.
There is a reverb effect on those drums that pushes them far in the background, but not far enough where you can't hear them.
They are there. They do what they're supposed to, but the effect of the song and the emotion behind it all calls for a distancing between the rest of the song and the drums so that you get the feeling of what the sentiment is about. Again, feeling distanced from your partner, feeling unseen.
I love how they emulated that emotion and sense of distance emotionally, with the instrumentation and how they recorded it.
I'm not sure if they did that on purpose exactly or if it just felt right for how the song was being done, but either way, it works for what the song is pushing.
The song is called "How I've Been". The vocals get a little bit more intense as the song goes on because the emotions kind of rise into the chorus, which talks about how he's never even asked how he's been.
Again, the feeling of being unseen is heavy-handed here, but I found that brave to be able to express in song.
A song like this does take guts. It's very open lyrically and lets a lot of the inner thought process and emotion come out everywhere, so it couldn't have been easy to string it all together and articulate it lyrically in a way that makes as much sense as it does.
There's obviously a lot of time and thought that went into the lyrics as well as the progressions, arrangement, and again, the tonality of how the instruments come across.
This allows the song to create a unified feel and mood. That's the purpose of it. It's supposed to create a mood, and whether or not you connect directly with it in your own personal situation, it's something that puts you in a certain space.
Being in that space lets you feel the emotion, and that is smart songwriting.
I definitely loved how this all came together and how it was able to give off so much persona so heavily without being afraid to put walls up.
I think this is what helps create real art. This is a song that was meant to get something off his chest, and he certainly did.
Self-expression is the key to any art form, and this is a perfect example of exactly that.
This was a great track that really put me in the moment with the song, made me think, and made me feel. Those are elements that we need more of in music these days.
So, have a listen to this track and pop on some headphones when you do it so that you could really take in all of the lyrics and feel that mood sort of take over.
November Dog - How I've Been (Spotify Link)
