Listen: Saintseneca - "Sleeper Hold"

photo by Nick Fancher

One of the most popular misconceptions in music seems to be the expectation that the space between albums is reserved almost exclusively for an extreme reinvention of a band's core sound. True, there's something refreshing about an artist who continuously pushes themselves to incorporate elements to keep challenging themselves but most of the development of a band's sound happens in slight increments not leaps and bounds. Columbus' Saintseneca has been slowly evolving their group sound for years and years from member to member. As the figurehead of the crew and arbiter or its creative vision, singer/songwriter Zac Little has had

In a sense "Sleeper Hold", the band's latest single from their upcoming album Such Things continues on a path charted as early as their 2013 debut full length Last. But ultimately "Sleeper Hold" focuses in on the poppiest moment of Dark Arc and both isolates and expands them. That's how you end up with these galvanizing, bliss-inducing harmony laden choruses. Zac Little and Maryn Jones tag team the vocal duties and in doing so provide the band's normal timbre play reserved for their multitude of stringed instruments.  In the same way that it's almost more of the same, it's a different approach to the band's absolutely infectious brand of folk pop as the group intentionally try to build on those elements. And with the focus being on these knee-jerk moment of pop euphoria, it's easy to miss the fact that Zac Little's songwriting remains at an absolute high able to embed these complicated philosophical questions into his song while drawing little attention them. It's smart lyricism that doesn't insist on how smart it is and is all the more better for it. Instead these little phrases pop out at you in a way that's exciting enough to make you deep dive into the song's less surface elements.




Saintseneca's forthcoming record Such Things is out October 9th on ANTI- Records.