Atlanta-based artist Avaraj delivers a deeply personal and affecting sound on new album The Crumble, which draws from heartbreak, grief, and resilience across a sound steeped in pop, rock, and electronic adornments. “I wrote this during and after my marriage failed due to miscarriages, so it’s about watching your marriage fall apart and feeling helpless,” Avaraj says. “It’s about going through loss and grief alone because my husband didn’t want to discuss what was going on. The child loss was the elephant in the room.”
Opening the album, “Romance” ventures from a melding of starry-eyed synths and lush guitar into a palpable vocal yearning: “All I needed was some romance, something to set the mood.” The melodic, dreamy production pairs with stirring lyrical sentiments of a relationship in analysis, traversing through strife as Avaraj’s vocals recount a fading romance — and the dissipating optimism and hope that comes alongside that; it makes for a powerful commencement to an album that compels in its heartfelt sincerity and tracings of loss.
Ensuing track “Two Lines” excels as well, weaving twinkling piano and slight strings with personal lyrical power. Aspirations for parenthood, and a search for personal meaning following loss, fuse with “time to let go” introspections — presenting a moving, ballad-ready entrancement. The album’s title track is another striking piece of songwriting, referencing being unable to bear “the weight” as loss, grief, and personal pain add up. Its twanging guitar lines combine with steady acoustic strums and impactful lyricism, capturing a relationship’s crumbling foundation in spite of trying to hold it all together; strings hit hard in the final moments, casting a heavy emotional spell. The Crumble is an affecting, from-the-heart success from Avaraj.
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This and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.
We discovered this release via MusoSoup.
