REVIEW: Dan Russell — Is It Love (SINGLE/VIDEO)
Atmospheric melodies have been turning up more and more in alternative music over the past ten years, but scarcely do they take the creative shape they do in the intriguing and provocative “Is It Love” by Dan Russell. Indie rock has, by tradition, always been an umbrella genre for those who want to experiment with the frayed ends of the rock n’ roll spectrum, but there’s nothing extraordinarily out of this world about the concept in “Is It Love;” it’s merely that Russell is able to turn the absence of intensity into a force for expression and creativity that I wouldn’t normally expect in a rock single.
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His is a more erudite form of alternative music, but it’s accessible to the underground faithful as well as the passively curious the same. The lyrics that we discover in “Is It Love” are haunting, but no more than the tonal presence of the instruments in this mix is. For that matter, there isn’t anything in this track that doesn’t seem like it was conceived with chills in mind; videographer David Wilson and director of photography German Disla really encapsulate a stark environment in the music video for this single that, despite its barebones nature and how little is actually happening, seems very entrancing and hypnotic. Jesse Russell directs the video while Dan Russell produces, and I think it’s evident that there isn’t a stitch of material presented here that wasn’t made under the close supervision of the man who penned the actual song.
As far as the studio end of this recording is concerned, I like the way the production style highlights the band backing Russell up here as much as it does clandestinely moving lyrics like “In the thunder clouds, mountains of rain to fall / In the twisting wind you hear the name that’s called / You hear the same thing, you fear the same thing.” While this is very much a solo project, it never feels indulgent with regards to our singer’s ego, which is not always true of songs in the underground getting the appreciation from critics that “Is It Love” is at the moment. The bells and whistles, as well as the self-righteous attitudes, are all on the sidelines for this release, which makes it even more of a gem against the backdrop of this player’s scene.
If you didn’t know about Dan Russell and his music before giving this track and its magnetizing music video a shot, I think you’re going to be left very excited by what “Is It Love” is offering to its audience this June. As a songwriter and producer, Russell is decisively giving us a look into his character as an artist in this single, and his performance indicates nothing but authenticity and a burning drive to get as much of the emotion that’s on his mind into the melodies he’s singing. I can go for more content like this from his camp in the future, and I’ll be interested in seeing how he follows up on this piece.
Colin Jordan
