September 9, 2022 - PLZ Make It Ruins
London R&B singer-songwriter George Riley’s Running In Waves is a dreamy yet economical melancholia of pain, change, empowerment, and redemption. It’s full of sadness, but not tragedy. This musical act is empowerment, not wallowing. It’s raw like a diary of existential themes about transitions in life, how change affects your emotional state, your emotional weight gains and losses.
Riley’s voice is soft, airy, and casual, as though she’s catching up with an old friend at home on a Saturday afternoon. Her words are direct, speaking to the emotions, generous in their vulnerability. The compositional syntax is playful and expressive, crafted with syncopation, modern stylistic looseness, and placed repetition. Riley’s singing interacts with the beats beneath and unravels during heightened emotional moments. Synthesized electronic accompaniment keeps things surprisingly light, with bouncy melodies, ethereal chords, and a simple instrumental palette, almost toy-like.
While the themes being addressed in Running In Waves are blue, all of these songs are bright golden yellow. This is a record of finding empowerment within tough times, within stagnant times, by asking the big open-ended questions life requires us to ask as we grow.
Standout tracks on the album are ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Acceptance.’ ☔