Brakence comes back from an agonizing slumber with arguably his greatest song yet, argyle.

The young artist has always been in his own league. Everything about his music: the production, the compositions, the melodies, the voice, has its own identity. There are very few artists that can get to the level of uniqueness and prestige Brakence has exercised since he was just a child making music. Argyle, at its worst, is similar to all that. You can tell that it’s a brakence song, and there isn’t anything here that’s necessarily new for the artist, which isn’t a bad thing by any means. While it would be interesting to hear the artist try something totally out of the blue, argyle is an improvement of his classic formula through and through. The thick bases ready to blow your speakers during the choruses are cleaner than ever, the complicated guitar licks filled with production tricks to make it sound alien, the punk influences in the second half of the song, it’s all there. What strikes the strongest in argyle is the emotion shining through both the instrumentation and the vocal performance. Outside of the heartbreaking lyrics, you can tell that brakence is conveying pain even without the help of words, which is an incredibly powerful statement to make in a song.

Argyle is brakence with even more experience; an exploration of the sound that rose him to gain such a close-knit following. Every part of this is an improvement on what already seemed like such a brilliantly perfected formula. With that being said, this song will not overshadow the rest of his discography by any means – what brakence has to offer in the rest of his catalog is further exploration of similar themes, sounds, and emotions. This is a masterful addition to his catalog, and paints brakence’s future ever so brighter, regardless of how grim and dark this song can be.

Author: Nicholas Gaudet

Music producer and writer from Dieppe, Canada.