I won’t ask for your heart
But if you leave it here, I’ll hold it ‘til the end times
And in a hundred years, I think they’ll try to read your fleshless palms
On Hollowing, the beautiful new track from Omnihell, Julian Ash treats devotion as a room one enters quietly, knowing the floorboards may give way. The title suggests subtraction, a person being scooped out from within, yet the song moves with surprising grace: gentle guitars, analogue warmth, and a vocal set high enough in the mix to feel almost conversational, as though Ash has stepped close to say the private part aloud.
Hollowing belongs to the tradition of love songs written after innocence has become an unreliable witness. The lyrics circle a figure admired for beauty and intelligence, someone whose composure cannot keep pain from showing. Ash’s speaker asks for little and offers much, promising care without ownership, permanence without possession. The romance is tender, but it also has the chill of an archaeological site: bodies gone, palms read after flesh has vanished, intimacy measured against the absurd patience of time.
“I would describe it as a love song,” Ash says succinctly.
Musically, the track feels dream-drunk without growing vague. Its guitars carry the soft jangle of The Smiths around Meat Is Murder, with a touch of Belle and Sebastian and The Sundays in the way the melodies seem to lean toward brightness while keeping one hand on the bruise. Ash’s voice brings another charge: earnest poetry, ringing strings, and an incredibly tender delivery that recalls Ian McCulloch around Candleland, with a faint trace of the later Horrors in its poised romantic gloom. There is even vocal flutter here that might make Morrissey jealous. The arrangement never overplays its sadness. It stands squarely, almost politely, while the ache accumulates.
The song has a peculiar charge from its emotional double exposure. One hears anguish, certainly, but also the straight-faced joke delivered without a blink, the kind of grim little aside that keeps a person from collapsing under the weight of feeling. Ash’s singing is gorgeous in the old-fashioned sense: carried by melody, unguarded yet controlled, bright enough to cut through the room without raising its voice. Beneath it, the track keeps its pace with understated
Listen to Hollowing below and order the single here.
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The post “I Won’t Ask for Your Heart” — Omnihell Returns with the Dream-laced Devotion of “Hollowing” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.