Anyone who has been following the evolution of music through the last thirty years will tell you that there isn’t nearly as much instrumental showmanship in the greater realm of pop as there used to be, but for Melissa Grey, David Morneau, and Robert Kirkbride, the current trends their contemporaries are following do not seem to matter much, if at all. On their brand new EP Always Becoming, the skilled collaborators Melissa Grey, David Morneau, and Robert Kirkbride deliver an instrumental effort free of the inauthenticity and streamlined compositional concepts that have plagued modern pop for too long, instead adhering to a classical blueprint for making powerful leads and rollicking tempos that inspire more through melodies than any singer can with a couple of catchy verses.
The rhythm in “Ever,” one of my favorite tracks from Always Becoming, feels a bit odd considering the fluidity of the guitar parts in the song, but when taking into account the unconventional beats in “Being” and “Always,” the unevenness of this composition feels apropos for the situation at hand. The artists boldly applies an avant-garde aesthetic to a lot of basic song structures in this record, but rather than coming across as scattered in their attempts at contemporary hybridity, they sound very focused and, debatably, more on-point than their mainstream rivals are at the moment.
Not everyone loves instrumental records, particularly extended plays, but I don’t think you have to be a guitar-worshiping audiophile to appreciate all that Always Becoming has to offer, especially in songs like the poignant “Becoming.” Had they invited a singer into the fold for this track, I don’t believe the emotionality in their strings would be nearly as prominent to us as it is here, and while I love an expressive lyric as much as the next person, you can’t put a price on the textural communications the guitar, bass, and percussion engage in throughout this EP.
I love the way that the grooves are made all the more powerful by the moderate use of indulgence in “Always,” and overall, I think that they deserve a lot of props for keeping their compositional wit on the conservative side of the spectrum in Always Becoming. Anyone can overload their arrangements and stack a lot of special effects to acquire that brutish tonality we’ve heard in
a lot of instrumentally powered affairs from one genre to the next, but to make a song like “Becoming,” you’ve got to be just a bit more surgical with regard to the construction of your setup, and the development of your melodies.
Though I wasn’t paying as close attention as I should have been before now, I’m planning on keeping tabs on what they release in the future, as this EP is absolutely one of the tougher guitar-driven instrumental records to put down once you’ve put it on the stereo for the very first time. Always Becoming doesn’t change the universe, but for what it was designed to do for the underground beat I don’t think it would be much of a stretch to deem it a slam dunk on all fronts.
Heather Savage
