Phillip LaRue - “Amen”
Today marks the third time that Nashville-based singer-songwriter Phillip LaRue has appeared on our blog since January– not a bad winning streak, if you ask us. It’s come to the point where we’ll see his name appear in our submissions and immediately open a blank document and commit to the review before we’ve even heard the song. But today, he has quite the tale of heartbreak for you within his new release, “Amen.”
In lieu of the time-tested acoustic guitar, this indie folk offering opens with some soft keys from a piano, quite melancholic and sombre in nature. LaRue’s amazing voice appears with the line: “I watched you fly away like a kite in the wind” and once you know that this was written about his grandmother’s struggle with dementia, we advise you to have some tissues handy. The world is full of songs about finding love and losing it, but seldom do we hear an artist bare their soul for a grandparent. We’re barely fifteen seconds into “Amen” and we’ve already been moved to tears.
For the first half of the track, it’s just LaRue’s voice, the piano, and the ears of the listener; however, calling this a sparse production would be doing it a great disservice as the emotion demonstrated through LaRue’s vocal delivery more than makes up for any absence of additional elements. Then, at a minute and a half, the music is joined by a string arrangement, bringing the soundscape to an even higher level of emotional display. “Amen” does exactly what we hope music will do: it reaches deep inside of us, then gently cradles our hearts, and it is likely that, upon hearing, no listener will ever be the same again.
-TM