With "Yellowhammer," The Trusted are Southend-on-Sea's ambassadors of a sound and a manifesto, a part post-punk howl at the moon, and part pulsing widescreen indie-pop cathartic experience. It’s a nagging one, a slappy conversation with the isolation and performative noise of our digital existence.
"Yellowhammer" lands with a visceral slap across the wrist, hiding behind a screen. It's not a love song but a muddy, homely, furious introspection, a theme song for those who are disengaging from society, who are fighting wars behind computer screens. Cunningham goes deep, every optimist is a pessimist at heart, a narcissist dressed up in pretty clothes. The stark, gut-punch brutality of these lines lay bare the vacuousness and depletion of performance culture.
The four-piece envelops you in a claustrophobic musical structure. Hypnotic synths whirl, guitars explode, and percussion thumps away with a heartbeat that cannot be subdued, regardless of being sleepy. Tom Cunningham’s voice weaves restraint through the verses, subtle, urgent, exposed, then detonates into a chorus of striking high-voltage sound that practically begs for a communal release.
It’s the emotional whirl of our all-connected, weirdly-empty world, scrolling, refreshing, searching for meaning that The Trusted channel so effectively. Their sound is a stadium-sized rush, but it never loses sight of the personal disintegration underneath.
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