Indie pop artist Shannen Bamford is back with another sweet-but-heavy single that’s ambitious in its structure. Bamford is taking a calculated risk with a song that runs for 5 whole minutes with relatively few melodic elements. But just how well the risk was calculated? Let’s find out.
Based in New York City, Shannen Bamford is a singer and songwriter whose spheres of pop and indie collide in land that’s more organic and grounded that indie’s customary cloudy and floaty nature. Bamford’s ‘Addicted’ is a song loaded with honey-toned guitars, a fantastic lyrical premise, and a superb production, all backing Bamford’s gentle but powerful delivery. Running for 5 minutes and with only 3 chords seems like a moot point, but for musicians, it is a challenging task to keep a song exciting for this runtime, and with just one harmonic figure that loops.
Bamford handles the challenge with elegance, delivering a soulful vocal part, and a heaving instrumental that grows over time from a gentle, unaccompanied electric guitar arpeggio in the intro, to a manic and stormy solo backed by a driving rock ensemble to end the song. Bamford’s lyrics handle breakup from a different point of view that looks inward, and instead of pointing fingers and laying the blame on the other party, she focuses on how she could have handled things better, claiming that her euphoria-seeking character -addicted to the pain that fast thrills leave in their wake- is at least partly to blame.
An exceedingly mature piece of songwriting, both instrumentally and lyrically, Bamford is brandishing a fascinating ability to hook in listeners with confrontational lyrics and restrained arrangements that keep giving the longer they go. ‘Addicted’ is a beautiful song about heartbreak that introduced me to an artist that I’ll be waiting for every upcoming release of hers.
