The CDO indie-heads are at it again with a track that boasts of a free-flowing tenor, a beautifully meandering melody, and a soothing assemblage of sonic accoutrements.
We don’t always get the privilege of a backstory, and that’s well and good.
Songs of a chaotic, haphazard bent are assumed to be forged from rigorous jams. The ones that reek of calm and control, meanwhile, mostly yield from pen, paper, and conversation.
But whenever the fine gentlemen of Svvell. from Cagayan de Oro are tasked to talk of the genesis of their material, it’s interestingly the reverse. The same is true of “Fin,” which is the result of an ice-breaker jam jumpstarted by sticky-as-glue notes courtesy of guitarist Ralph Tan.
In the span of a mere hour, singer-guitarist Yoo Han Ko came up with the basic pillars for the earworm-inducing progression and melody, and the rest is history.
“[It’s] about how one embraces the reality that change is the only constant thing in this walk,” the band says in a statement. But really, what seems to have remained constant is the quintet’s knack for stylish languor: a veneer for the melancholy marooned deep within.
As always, the Svvell. hallmarks are present: a free-flowing tenor, a beautifully meandering melody, a soothing assemblage of sonic accoutrements. Most importantly, it is, as they suggest, a “super-appropriate” portrayal of how they feel as a band: in a state of flux, but with hell-bent focus.
“Water me, drown with I, see me in your eye / Do you want to sleep alone? / Be my hand, make it bend, help it make a friend” they sing, the repetition calming but never numbing, the circularity dynamic rather than desperate and dull.
Svvell. are sound architects of the highest order, and their EP “Hypermnesia” remains a benchmark, I feel, within the Lilystars catalog. “Fin” sounds like a tasteful piece of furniture in an already well-appointed home—it’s not the best piece in it, but who can necessarily tell?—and it signals, to me, not so much growth but a confirmation of their standards in creation.
“This track definitely marks a change in direction for us. What that is exactly we do not know, but we feel it,” the guys say, later on promising “a more cinematic approach” to writing and arranging.
But hey, if I’m being honest, they’re already there.