Rose Blood – “Feelings”

Rose Blood – “Feelings” – Single Review

I’ll fully admit, I didn’t really know what to expect here, but this wasn’t it!

“Feelings” by Rose Blood is an interesting tune…and in many ways, it’ll end up dictating what happens in the future of this project led by Eddie Figueroa.  It’s the debut single from Rose Blood, and every artist has been there in some capacity…you learn so much from what you put out there at the beginning.

All-in-all, there IS a song here, and ultimately, I do like what I found in this tune.  Eddie is both a songwriter and producer, and he’s responsible for everything we hear…with his credentials ranging from being the artist behind it all and the engineer on the boards, we genuinely have to assume that things have come out sounding the way that he wants them to.  Where a track like “Feelings” scores a significant win is within its artistic merit and willingness to roam into experimental terrain.  It’s not an overtly complex tune in terms of what’s required to play it, but Eddie has shrouded that successfully in a plethora of production tools that could very well work for, or potentially against it.  Generally speaking, I’m always an advocate for the music being louder than the vocals as that’s what leads to bigger sounds in the scene overall…I don’t need to hear every word in order to like or love something.  That being said, when you go with this particular recipe, you end up really needing the music to be the most engaging factor…and I’m not entirely convinced that Rose Blood has got that fully dialed in just yet.  To me, it’s the vocal melody that probably has the most going for it, and having it buried as deep into the music as it is makes it very hard for the average everyday listener to reach…and that could be problematic to the way that it’s received overall.  You want those reasons to return as audible as possible, and I’d be the first to tell ya that they’re buried pretty damn deep in the way that “Feelings” is mixed in a very Shoegaze type of way.  Again, for myself personally, I’m all about that kind of stuff to a degree…I like hazy, I like hypnotic…heck, I even like tunes that challenge what I like to think I know about music, which this song certainly does.  Do I think that Eddie would be better off with the music lower and the vocals up in this particular instance?  Yes.  Does that mean he should do that?  No, of course not.  It’s a debut tune my brother…take in the feedback, absorb what people say, and stay true to whatever your vision is.

I look at it like this…without a major varying degree of complexity in the instrumentation, or even in the vocal pattern for that matter, length becomes a real determining aspect of what people will listen to.  When things don’t change enough, there’s much more risk involved…and longer songs have a much more uphill battle than something short would.  I’ll be completely honest with ya…I cannot for the life of me figure out why there’s a need for a part I/part II structure in this song with a large break in the middle that would have folks wondering where Eddie has gone for a moment there.  Yes, it’s true that you could argue that the second half of “Feelings” is played with a bit more vibrant intensity and life in its veins, sure – but we’re essentially talking about something that sounds like what we just heard, only with more vivid details in the music of its latter half.  The vocals are arguably even less accessible to the ear than what we heard in the first part as a result of the music having even more of a presence – and to be real with the guy, Eddie’s got to ask himself if all this is really what he’s going for.  It is tough to justify nearly three minutes of a song that doesn’t really change all that much, never mind a song like “Feelings” that ends up being just shy of seven.  I might dig on tunes that have a droning aspect to them, but I’m very much the exception and not the norm…when it comes to what the masses would hear in “Feelings,” I think the real substance to this tune is getting lost.  Like I said at the start though, it really depends on what Rose Blood is going for sound-wise, and we’re only going to know the answer to that by whatever comes out next.  One track never tells the whole story, and the entire business of music is making constant adjustments without compromising the style of what you want to create so much that you lose sight of it all.  There’s definitely some tangible uniqueness in what Rose Blood’s debut single has got going for it, but I feel like there’s a very good chance that the nuance of it all is going to be lost on most listeners, and that what could certainly be regarded as clever production would merely be like sounds without enough separation to their ears.  Any hooks to be found are probably buried a lot further into this tune than Eddie might even realize.  I think there’s still work to be done in what Rose Blood is looking to create…but that should genuinely be the case for just about everyone starting out…you want that room to evolve and grow within your craft.

With the skillset he’s got on his resume, I have full confidence this whole story of what Rose Blood is going to be all about will get much clearer as time goes on and we hear that next tune to come out.  As it stands right now, there’s no doubt that Eddie’s an ambitious & determined artist and that Rose Blood has a sound of its own…now it’s a matter of making that work to his advantage as this project develops.

Find out more about the music of Rose Blood at the official website:  https://slojam.org

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