Music Existence Because of Music, We Exist
Lyrically, Rich Wyman and Lisa Needham are all heart and soul in the new single “Forgiveness,” which features a dexterous arrangement supplying him with a backdrop fit for a king. Both players are belting out line after line in this track with the kind of passion that normally we’d hear from a veteran of the game long before we ever would a duo still trying to make a name for itself, and had I not known otherwise, I would have assumed this to be their twentieth single with this particular format in the studio with him. “Forgiveness” is telling of the future, or at the very least, the exciting present.
Needham frames the lyrical content in this song quite beautifully, but this isn’t what makes her words feel so real. Instead, I would credit the way she’s singing – and more specifically the voice she’s singing with – when it comes to figuring out the source of all the melodic charisma in “Forgiveness.” She has got it factor that you can’t fake into existence, and regardless of how much any of her rivals practice I think they’ve got a long way to go before they catch up to her comfortability in the studio here.
The guitar that backs Wyman’s singing prominently in the mix is an indispensable tool when it comes to making the emotion in his words stick, and when isolated from the rest of the band I think it’s a little sharper in style as well. There’s something eternally sexy about the six-string we discover in a good pop song, and this is a scenario in which the guitar is made to be both passive and essential at the same time, skewing minimalist aesthetics with a forward-thinking, melody-first dynamic that I want to hear a lot more of in pop music as the future unfolds.
Lisa Needham’s rhythm is admittedly a little deeper in the background than the rest of the arrangement of parts in this song is, but there isn’t a moment in which it isn’t contributing as much to the grander scheme of things as Rich Wyman is on his own. There are no props to come between artists and audience in this performance, but instead, a series of creative segues that immerse us in the tale that these players are spinning together, and as much as it pains me to say it, this alone makes “Forgiveness” a diamond in the rough right now.
I love what Rich Wyman and Lisa Needham introduce us to in this single, and I think this duo has got a lot of potential to do great things with the artistic fundamentals outlined in “Forgiveness.” There’s plenty of room for them to get a little better at what they have started up with here, but all in all, I don’t know that there’s another release out in independent pop music this spring with the same kind of inspired feel this song has. Simply put, it’s one of a kind, but likely not the last of its breed.
Jordan Raab
