A new single release from Southside Jake brings together a flurry of genres with a rock backbone touched with a southern undertone and it also hints of country, and it's all done with this massive character in cinematic approach that really wraps itself around you and keeps you right where it wants to.
"Whiskey Man" certainly has a particular breed of honesty to it so you're getting some insight into his personality and the song seems to serve almost like a chapter in the artist's life itself which is something you pick up on quite quickly.
The music of the track has a unique way of building an intensity as it goes on and you get layers of guitars from clean to heavier but what I love about this is the sheer fact that there is not only so much persona attached to it but how amazingly lush it feels with these layers of guitars and also how it has these musical hooks that I really like and those hooks have a certain kind of distortion on them that had an engine to the song as well.
The main vocal hook which is the chorus, really sticks with you for hours or even days after the song has ended which is great but that musical guitar hook that comes in there adds a certain darkness to the song and I feel like this song does have a darkness to it in general but he's letting it out and the only way he knows how which is through his music.
The track definitely has a catchiness to it, and I love this sort of vast feel that it gives off as well while the vocals sit atop everything perfectly and give that character the entire time.
There was definitely a lot of attention to detail during the course of this song but throughout it all and never loses that persona that it was built with in the first place and that may be the most important part of the whole thing.
In a way I feel like this might have been even cathartic for the artist to write and release but for the listener it's pretty relatable and I adore how the whole soundscape of it is put together and how the mix of this track really pushes the whole aesthetic of the song to where it needs to be.
This is a track that sort of lets you into an inner thought process and he's telling you about the kind of person that he is in different sections of the song especially the chorus but the way it's all delivered is really what makes it work so well.
It is a little hard to put your finger on exactly what genre this is although it is to me kind of a rock song of sorts, but it also has alternative pop, and again, that southern undertone to it almost like it was influenced by country as well.
I really love digging into songs that get personal the way that this one does because I feel like that may not be an easy thing to do and when artists do it, they are putting pieces of themselves out there.
Southside Jake is a perfect example of exactly that and upon listening to this track I took it upon myself to take a little bit of a deep dive through the artist's back catalog which I'm really glad I did because I found a whole bunch of releases that date back to 2011.
Now, after doing this I started to pick up on the hip hop aspect of Southside Jake and how he's able to incorporate the hip hop with the southern Soul really well and I think that that's what I was trying to put my finger on with this single.
This is the kind of artist where you have to listen to more than one track to really get a feel for the spectrum of what he's able to give off.
This was a killer single that delivered a certain honesty, personality, and drive with a great crossover of genres and an edgy overtone that gets you sort of engulfed in the song itself.
Definitely check this out when you can and then check out some of his previous releases because they're all really good as well.
Remember where you heard it first.
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