roger weeks - “North Dakota”
Photo by Lauren Nieves
After spending years searching for love, roger weeks has found the key to happiness within himself, effectively portrayed in his new single, “North Dakota.”
Though the message within this song is grand, the production here is quite simple. For the majority of the track, the listener is given the lone sounds of an acoustic guitar, coupled with the raw, Bon Iver-ness of roger weeks’ vocal. It was this element, in fact, that led to us falling in love with “North Dakota.” With lyrics like “On the other side of letting go, I think I finally found hope,” any listener is bound to find fragments of their own journey through life, love, and all of the messiness in between.
And where “North Dakota” remains stripped-back in instrumentation, roger weeks more than makes up for it with his glorious utilization of vocal layering– there are times when it sounds as though he’s hired a choir. It is here where we hope other artists take note and consider the idea that multiple tracks of vocals are often what will set a song apart from the others that land in our stacks of submissions. Granted, the knack for empathetic storytelling does not hurt, which is just another reason that “North Dakota” should be heard and studied until the end of time.
About the track, the artist explains: “North Dakota is about how I found love in being alone. It’s about how on the other side of letting go of a toxic love I thought I couldn’t live without, I finally found hope and the life of my dreams. North Dakota is a song I wrote when I realized that after years of searching for love in someone else, the key to my happiness was to love myself.”
-HD