Alone but not quite removed from the audience he’s playing for, a stoic Andrew Z is ready to introduce us to a kaleidoscopic world of melodies in his new single “Growing Pains,” even if they are some of the more muted tones of vibrancy to debut in an indie track this season. Where a lot of his contemporaries have been embracing stylizations that have more in common with minimalism than they do surrealism lately, Andrew Z wants to experiment with the postmodern in “Growing Pains,” and to me, it results in some of the smartest content a singer/songwriter has produced lately.
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This song is constructed more around the tension in the rhythm than it is any particular lyrical device, but I don’t know that one element could exist without the other. So much of what Andrew Z is saying to us in this performance starts and ends with the cadence of his delivery, as it undeniably shapes the emotional subtext of his words in a way that even the harmonies he forms never could. He’s got a mathy approach to expressiveness, but it’s one that has got to be among the more unique of any in his scene at the moment.
We don’t need any big instrumental buffers behind Andrew Z to appreciate the depth he’s got when he’s at the microphone, and though he would potentially benefit from collaboration in some instances, this isn’t one of them. He needs the entirety of the spotlight transfixed on his every motion, as it aids the fluidity in what feels like one of the more intimate tracks I’ve come across in pop over the past few months. He’s still got a lot of potential, but what we’re experiencing in “Growing Pains” is anything but what the title would suggest from an artistic standpoint.
This fragile lead vocal bewitched me from the moment I heard it for the first time forward, and I would have deemed it the centerpiece of the single were it not for the multipronged nature of the harmonies. The strings are an undisputed element of magic in “Growing Pains,” and what they contribute to the grander scheme of things here is irreplaceable by all accounts. Critically speaking, Andrew Z was shooting for the stars in this performance, but what he developed in this track is nonetheless something both humble and formatted to be exploited again in a future piece.
I really want to hear more of what this player is making, and judging from the ambitiousness of his most recent studio offering, this is hardly going to represent the ceiling of his creative output. Andrew Z indeed has a lot in common with some of his more charismatic peers in the American underground today, but not in any department that could be described as cosmetic in nature. By design, he’s a natural experimentalist, but it’s the way he’s putting his experiments into play with a song like “Growing Pains” that makes him stand out as a cut above the rest this September. The official release date for this single and his EP was Sept. 23rd. Congratulations!
Heather Savage
