The Bay Area’s Decant is back with a new song “Offshore,” the latest plunge into the experimental dark-pop outfit’s titanically emotional creations. It’s the fourth single they’ve shared since Joey Verdian (keyboard/guitar) founded the band back in 2016. Today they are a four-piece outfit consisting of Freddie Bytheway (vocals), Van Jackson-Weaver (keyboard/guitar), and Thelonius Quimby (drums) — with each new addition adding to their sonic immensity exponentially.
With paced certainty “Offshore” slowly submerges you beneath an ever-deepening current of electronic textures and ebbing vocals. Where elongated and droning synths envelop you in overwhelming anticipation of an anxiety that is never resolved. And the steadily ethereal repetitions of Bytheway’s gleaming cries — “You are everything you want / You are everything” — persist like a glitter of sunlight reflecting faintly into the depths.
“More than most, this is a song of metaphors,” Bytheway said of the track. “It was the middle of the pandemic, and my husband and I were trying to make our relationship survive the 13th year of marriage, which I could only describe as an ocean, the epitome of awesome and dangerously vast distance.”
The result is a song that instills both the exhilaration and terror of exploring the deepest recesses of intimacy in a relationship. “Offshore” epitomizes Decant’s ability to translate the mercurial realms of identity and emotion into such sublimely roiling soundscapes. As mesmeric as they are rapturously soothing — once you are set adrift within one of their songs you’ll be hard-pressed to ever want to paddle out.
Be sure to check out Decant’s previous singles: “Beverly” (feat. Kosie) captivates with its haunting pairing of glimmering piano keys and thrumming bass, while their debut “Gallatin” bends their atmospherics to accommodate alt-R&B inflections and soul. Taking inspiration from an eclectically avant-garde mix of bands and artists — from Radiohead and Portishead to FKA Twigs — that they have every possibility of being counted amongst.
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Words: Steven Ward
Listen to “Offshore” the new single from Decant below!
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