Every once in a while, I come upon new music that stops me in my tracks. It can be from surprise at the ideas (or combinations thereof) present, from the power or singularity of the emotional content, or simply from how good the music is.
In the case of Stages of Grief's latest single, "from the depths of my soul," it was all of those reasons.
The song starts with a muffled, heartbeat-like kick that is soon joined by a graceful, soaring vocal line and clattering percussion before morphing into the main body of the song: a pair of verses delivered over a heavy bass line and tinny, metallic melodic lines lurking in the background. There are definite cues from genres like trip-hop and witch house in the drums, but they blend with the other textures to create a soundscape still distinct from those markers.
The vocals in the verse warrant particular attention, starting with a frank delivery that sounds downright exhausted and gradually adding in intermittent screams until they completely overtake the clean singing at the end of the second verse. The contrast between these two techniques and the beautiful high lines bookending the song ends up enhancing the impact of each, while held together as a cohesive whole by the instrumental landscape.
Taken as a whole, "from the depths of my soul" is one of the best songs I've heard so far this year, offering a clear vision of an uncommon and difficult-to-execute emotional atmosphere in less than three minutes. My only disappointment is that, according to Bandcamp, Stages of Grief has only released four songs to date. I hope an album happens someday, because "from the depths of my soul" is truly something special.