One of the challenges facing the singer-songwriter, voice and guitar driven song is how to sound big. Not big in the bombastic, U2 stadium rock sense but in knowing how to take these simple elements and lift them off the musical page, make them sound robust and accessible, set them apart from the pack. Some do it by deft and intricate guitar work, layering vocals, production tricks and other gimmickry. Mitchell Mirande does it simply by writing great songs, delivering them with competence and confidence and then adding just the most perfect touches of texture and wash.
It seems pretty obvious really, why dress a song up to create some sort of pretend elegance when you can strip it back to actual eloquence? And Hold On is eloquent, in that same way which makes the transient nature of watercolours more powerful than the vibrant nature of oil paintings, a combination of keeping things musically simple, though far from simplistic, musically ethereal and that fantastic voice of his. Letting the music breath and the vocals soar, a vocal which seems to blend romance and honesty and a soulfulness with a delivery that most rock singers would kill for.
Get the basics right and sometimes the rest will just naturally fall into line.
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