"Rouse" — A Track Review

Cover art by Esmé Eldridge

"Rouse", the latest single from my friend Vianca's solo project Vvii, is a song that I've heard being played in our rehearsal room a million fucking times, and it's a song that I can hear another million times if I had the chance to. It's one of my favorites of hers, and one that I look forward to every time I catch one of her band's sets.

Like its title suggests, the song is a rousing piece of music that starts off with the dirtiest bass tone you can imagine and goes straight into an instrumental intro section complete with massive walls of guitars and a thunderous snare sound that eventually gives way to the song's first verse. All throughout, there's an emphasis on atmosphere with many small embellishments thrown into the mix and a layered sense of production that rewards repeated listens and complements the song's overall sense of drama. And, if anything, that's the word I would use to describe the song as a whole—dramatic.

Now, while that might seem like a bit of a callous word to use, I mean it in the best way possible, as Vianca's music conveys the power of that word each and every time I listen to it, and always leaves me feeling like something important's just happened. It's dramatic, it's tense—it's foreboding in a way that I've only ever heard her be. Her music sounds nothing like the music of her peers, and is wholly unique to her and the sound that she goes for with each song that she writes. And "Rouse", in all its intensity, does an amazing job at getting that sound across, as it's a powerful piece of music that only makes me wait in anticipation for the next track she puts out; me—a genuine fan of hers since the moment I first heard her music.