Vents MagaZine Music and Entertainment Magazine
Related Articles
A pastoral harmony, a frank tonal presence, and the friction between your heart and the beat – separately these elements are more than enough to stoke the interest of the average passerby, but together they create an eruptive force in Justine Sletten’s “Dandelion” lyric video so fetching that it’s next to impossible for us to focus on anything else when the music is playing.
https://www.instagram.com/justinesletten_/?hl=en
Our hearts are racing right from the jump, and although the lyrics on our screen are the initial flashpoint of said focus, it is ultimately the rigid rhythm that spurs forth the video’s beat winning the king’s share of our attention in “Dandelion.” Sletten does everything she can to not contain her emotions in this superior new single, and even though 2022 has been filled with a lot of really intriguing new music – most of which, I might add, has come from the country genre – hers is a sound that stands on its own as one of the more memorable and surreal of any to come out of her Canadian scene in recent memory.
Attention to the smallest of details is key to the design of “Dandelion,” and to properly break down the song’s most alluring of intricacies, one must start with the very fabric of its instrumental melodies. Even if Sletten hadn’t been in the center of the spotlight here, there’s something to be said about the urbanity of the string harmonies that use the percussion as a canvas atop which to paint us a beautiful picture.
They’re seamlessly woven together, not dissimilar to what one would expect to find in a handmade tapestry, and with the added physicality of the master mix, they provide us with just as much of an emotional push as the lyrical content does. That’s not an easy feat for even the most accomplished of composers in the world to pull off, let alone an artist devoted to making the kind of swinging country sound that Sletten is. There’s nothing status quo about this young woman or her music; in an era dominated by sound-alikes and recyclers of classic rhythm (especially in pop), she’s one of the few unique solo artists to make her way without drawing too heavily from the well of her Nashville predecessors.
The last few years have been producing some of the very best country music that I’ve had the pleasure of examining in some years, and if there is one artist making noise right now that I would tell you to check out above all others this month, it is undeniably Justine Sletten. Her melodic country swagger is exactly what had been missing from the North American underground over the past autumn season, and unlike some of her competitors, she has virtually nothing in her sound to tie her to the ongoing surrealism movement in this or any other genre. There’s nothing particularly revolutionary about “Dandelion,” but that might be what makes it such a stellar find – it’s got flow, a sensational hook, cosmetic appeal, and a lot of enticing singing that would make anyone excited, and most if not all of us can agree these are qualities that make Canadian country music the best it can be.
Jennifer Munoz
