Continua – “The Beauty Of Letting Go” / “Underrated”
Continua – “The Beauty Of Letting Go” / “Underrated” – Singles Review
“The Beauty Of Letting Go” is honestly quite an interesting choice to have put out there as a single…it’s got a fairly anti-typical design to what we tend to associate with tracks that can often be the gateway into the rest of the catalog. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of appeal to it…but yeah…strange choice all the same. It’s sitting in that dangerous mid-tempo that tends to be confusing as all hell for the listening audience…they don’t know whether to get their mosh on, just bounce a little bit on their heels, or stand still and watch, you know what I mean? To me, when you’re listening to the verses of “The Beauty Of Letting Go,” they actually have a lot in common with the way a band like Alice In Chains would approach their structure/melody combinations…it’s sludgy, a little on the desolate side of energy, and it also gives them the room they need to amp things up further in the chorus, which Continua goes on to do, almost like something you’d hear in Tesseract. Nothing too crazy for the most part, though it’s worth noting that the final thirty or forty seconds of this track move a lot faster than you’d probably realize. Bishop Battle keeps things sounding like they’re not moving at warp speed through the controlled delivery he brings to “The Beauty Of Letting Go” in the vocal department, but you’ll notice that the band is moving at a much more frantic pace towards the end, which kind of gives you the best of both worlds during the finale of this single. I am a huge fan of the way that Brian Buckalew plays bass – this dude has been slayin’ it from beginning to end in this cut, but it’s still just as fair to say that he takes it all up another level when it comes to the way they finish off this song. All-in-all, when it comes to “The Beauty Of Letting Go,” I feel like between Battle & Buckalew, they give you plenty of reason to listen to this single. Battle still has room to do more if he ever feels so inclined…he seems like he’s got flashes of a Patton-esque potential to him in there somewhere deep down, or again, something along the lines of Daniel Tompkins from Tesseract. The song works…there are memorable aspects to it that I think are stronger than most might realize if they were to just spin it once or twice, but if you put some listening into this track from your side of the speakers, it won’t take you all that much longer to really have those main hooks sink in permanently. It’s got an energy to it that tends to be tougher on the masses, but I have the feeling Continua could really make this track a massive highlight when playing live. As it stands, it’s already a pretty large track around the 5:20-ish mark, but if they really wanted to unleash the beast, they could take the finale of this song for a serious ride onstage & expand this closer to the ten minute mark and I’m confident no one in the audience would even think of complaining. The potential for the fireworks to come out at the end of “The Beauty Of Letting Go” certainly exists, 100%; I don’t think they quite chose to take it in that direction for the recorded version that we hear, but anytime they wanna choose to LIGHT THIS MOTHER UP live from the stage, I can pretty much guarantee it’ll take this song out of its mid-tempo energy and send the whole crowd into a complete frenzy. Always a good card to have in the back of your pocket…”The Beauty Of Letting Go” could be the kind of live highlight no one would forget.
Coming out this November 1st, I feel like you can look at “Underrated” in a couple of ways. On the one hand, and the most positive side of the scenario, I don’t think it can be denied that it works. On the other hand, this would be the kind of song that really borrows from tried, tested, and true methods…the kind of track that feels tremendously inorganic like it has been grown in a lab, with results that are fairly predictable in that regard. Now, what people will often skip over, is the fact that this doesn’t HAVE to be a bad thing whatsoever – that’s really up to Continua and how they view what they create. If they’re looking to create BIG STADIUM tunes that people can sing and clap along with, then “Underrated” proves they can accomplish that goal without a doubt. It’s a little more to the direction that you’d find something like Imagine Dragons is in by comparison to something like we heard in “The Beauty Of Letting Go,” which was a bit of a surprise, but admittedly, these two songs were my first experience with Continua’s music. I dig that we get to have a better glimpse of guitarist Jason “Iceman” Mulkey’s chops on this second track, and I feel like it confirms that Alex Crockett is as steady as they come as well. Bishop sings really clearly and always on-key, but he’s still got some space to really own the moment and take us with him as we listen. As I’ve said many times on these pages of ours throughout the years, there’s no shame in creating a flawless tune, and that remains just as true as ever in the context of this particular single. Just because we might see its twists & turns coming from quite a distance, or feel like the beat & the way that “Underrated” moves is something we’ve experienced throughout many corners of the music scene in a variety of ways already, still doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be proud of how seamless the end product is, you know what I mean? It takes a whole lot of effort from a band to get a song sounding like everything is in the right place, and I feel like Continua deserves their due credit for getting this track to be as professionally polished as it is. That being said, y’all know I exist solely to challenge all the artists/bands to tap into their absolute best…and if I’m being real with ya, I feel like Continua sounds like they are still searching for their identity and what makes them different from anything else that’s out there already. It’s not something that happens overnight…it can actually take years and years, if it even happens at all. In the grand scheme of things, they’re still a very young band on the early side of their timeline – Continua has space to evolve and grow though, which is always a good thing to have, in my opinion. There’s plenty of time for them to build on what they’ve started with their debut record Daybreak from 2022, and their versatility could certainly be a huge strength going forward, but it is an aspect of making music that can definitely make it harder to achieve that ever-elusive identity at the same time. At the end of the day, they’ve created a real anthem for the underdog on “Underrated,” and they could very well go on to be playing this track in packed sports arenas with fans waving their rally towels for the home team – I might not know half as much about sports as I do about music, but I’m assuming that that can’t be a bad thing. There’s good stuff brewing here…I don’t know if I know quite what it is yet – or if even they do, but they have all the right pieces they need to succeed, a highly capable band, and clear desire to entertain ya.
Find out more about Continua from the official websites below!
Main Site: https://www.continuaband.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/continuaband
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Continua_band
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/continua/1163266862
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