Hasten Mercy Simply Appeals on Self-Titled Project
By Deuce
No matter how much about it you’ve heard, you can never say enough about simplicity. Especially not about music, in which the understated, the reserved, the plain, has an innate smoothness and, in the case of Hasten Mercy’s latest EP Hasten Mercy, definite appeal.
So this is an EP, right? He only packs three cuts. Simple. None of them go too far beyond the three and a halt minute marker. Simple. And when you hear the melodies, the arrangements, and the music played on this affair, there’s very few doubts that it’s simple in a winning way.
In fact, the only thing that belies this motif for this project is the lyrics the vocalist kicks, which display a penchant for poetry that’s refreshing to hear these days. On “Star You Are”, the male vocalist assures his audience “this is the end of all your fears/the culmination of 1,000 years” which contains Masonic symbolism, if anything.
Dude invites a potential lover to “go on a dream with me” in “These Things”, while he threatens to sojourn to a place “where the sun has yet to rise” on the finale, “Break Everything”.
Still, the songs themselves function more like everyman narratives, as artless in their ambitions as ambition can be. “Star” makes no bones about being a pop song, and largely succeeds in this endeavor.
There’s a smooth, flowing piano providing the main melody that is substituted at various times with different synths reprising it. Money flips the four-on-the-floor drum pattern with a snare, hits you with long periods of instrumental work, and displays his chanting style of singing that is as laid back as a recliner.
“Break Everything”, however, may very well be the best piece on this collection. It’s a ballad that adorns his singing—which actually sounds like bona fide singing, no chanting bit on this one—with far from complex keyboard chords and a curvaceous string sound that is very likely a synth as well.
Nonetheless, his emotion pours through lucidly, and perhaps best on this one, which takes nothing away from the other tunes including “These Things”. This time out he works a dubstep bass with big chords that are solely accentuated by his voice and a couple kicks and snares. He eventually comes with the piano before transporting you to another level with a nylon guitar (hard to say if it was synthesized or played live), which is a fitting symbol for this EP as a whole.
