Posted: by The Alt Editing Staff
Cleveland’s Crown Shy returns with “Haunts,” a crisp autumnal anthem signaling the official onset of spooky season. Jimmy Wilkens (The Sonder Bombs, Biitchseat), front-person, audio engineer, songwriter – let’s just call them the crown jewel of Crown Shy – explains that the new single “is about nostalgia and looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.” But it’s also, Wilkens continues, about the tension of “living too much in the past or future so much so that you forget to be in the present and miss experiencing what’s happening now. It’s also about the sadness that comes with regularly being in a space that no longer feels good being in, like a home bar that’s changed or a group of friends you’ve moved on from. The lyric ‘when your old haunts feel more haunted than they’re supposed to’ is the core of the song to me.”
To me, Wilkens’ octaved double vocals illustrate the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ of parallel experience, reliving a memory while simultaneously encountering the present. Clear, warm synth chords syncopate with punchy 808-style drum machine, while Wilkens’ vocals soar in a crooning, melancholic contrast that articulates the way memory, or the faded rose-colored tint of one, can warp the present – even when wrapped in a danceable groove.
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Mol White | @molemanmedia
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