Radar: Harmony Woods (Sofia Verbilla) stream “Jenkintown-Wyncote” off of her debut album, and it took our breath away
We all make mistakes; sometimes we get too busy and neglect the things that might be direly important, or even just succumb to the pressure of the outside world and lose track of time. This week, my mistake was not being able to write about the new Harmony Woods track sooner.
The overtly modest indie rock track highlights personal memories that juxtapose the motifs that we find consistently in our own lives; dread and relief, uncertainty and clarity, darkness and the renewal of light, all amplified through the veil of public transit and set to beautifully piercing instrumentals. The track is just the first glimpse we have of Nothing Special, the debut record from Philadelphia native Sofia Verbilla’s project “Harmony Woods”, and it sets the bar quite high for what can be expected from this record.
In squeezing a song or release into the genre of “indie”, you are placing it into a very crowded category of music, populated with a sort of “bases loaded” mentality, where musical themes and ideas tend to be unintentionally recycled from one Friday to the next. Thus, uniqueness and divine originality can often be lost among the sea of artists, vying for the hungry ears of a diverse listener base. But, in listening to “Jenkintown-Wyncote”, the song strikes me by one major characteristic — its ability to stand out. Verbilla has created something that feels so genuine and thoughtful, that the concept promotes a warming feeling, making the music that much more attractive. It feels almost sui generis in its artistic presence, crafting beautiful songwriting into elegant vocals and poignant lyrical value.
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