‘Chemical Compound’ is a clever little mishmash of a showcase song, starting off with some elegant picked guitar and bass parts before adding dreamy, ephemeral synths and a wonderful little phased and distorted guitar lead part, before dropping into total strummy acoustic guitar singer-songwritery-ness.
With less talent, that might all sound a little disjointed, but in the hands of Paul Marotto, it’s skilfully woven together into a cohesive, clever little whole all held together with a lazy, languorous, Plain White Tees-style vocal that perfectly fits that track. It’s reminiscent of those North-East US college radio indie-rock tracks that seem to permeate consciousness every so often – They Might Be Giants, Bare Naked Ladies, or the Presidents of the USA. That’s a very, very good group to be a part of, and Paul Marotto is in some very clever company with ‘Chemical Compound’. We can’t wait to hear more.
You can check out Paul, and his ‘Orange Crush’ recording set-up at Haunted House Studios, here; listen to ‘Chemical Compound’ on Spotify.
Review by Alex Holmes