David Laborier Releases A Lush and Guitar-Riddled Single
- R.A.G.
- 20 hours ago
- 4 min read
A new release from David Laborier recently dropped, and this is a single that breaks down some boundaries in terms of creating inventive and genre-bending pieces of music by incorporating rock and jazz to build something that feels refreshing, colorful, and very vibrant, especially in terms of its energy.
Although the guitar is a main point of focus throughout "Owl Skewl", a flurry of instrumentation comes through, bringing together beautiful tones to create something that's got its own atmosphere altogether.
This is an energetic track. It's not slow or low-key by any means. It is actually a bit upbeat and combines this exciting set of performances with a smooth undertone.
You start to realize that all the instruments are almost like characters. Each of them brings its own tone, yes, but they also have a personality attached, and I think that's what makes the song come to life the way it does.
The guitar work is absolutely outstanding. It's pretty much perfect, but it has soul attached to it. There's a passion behind the performance of everything, but that guitar really showcases it right at the forefront.
You got great hooks and a lot of it is electrified, so you have this almost rock feeling backbone that it leans on while it flows with the jazz tonalities.
The track also incorporates some amazing horns from trombone to saxophone, and even trumpet. These textures, along with the guitars and the live percussion, bring the song to an amazing place.
The beauty of a song like this is that it's a bit of an adventure.
There are some amazing changes and tons of attention paid to the arrangement. But again, there are elements about the song that feel alive and breathing. Not exactly improvised, but almost there.
This once again brings in plenty of that jazz overtone and influence.
When the song opens up, you have some great, almost crunchy chords and progressions that are overlapped by trumpets that are harmonizing and playing an almost cinematic feeling funk hook.
This is followed by what I would consider to be the main riff on the guitar which is awesome, and this is a company by the drumming that is semi-heart-hitting again, feeding in a little bit to the rock feel but not over the top.
Everything feels like a call back to me. Like the guitars play some stuff, and then the horns return. I love that callback feel and how the instruments bounce between each other, almost like they're speaking.
Then, the main hook is played together with guitar horns, and that really gives such a great set of layers in depth to that melody.
It is a very lively hook as well, touched with cultural flair, and has a very exciting aesthetic to it.
Soon after, you have more focus on the guitar as it delivers a bit of a solo, and the solo walks that line between the rock and the jazz amazingly
As the guitar starts to gain intensity and go on with the solo, ripping into higher notes and touching on different elements of performance, the horn sections come in and out, peppered in and giving backbone and thickness to everything.
Nothing about this is overdone, but instead is very dynamically balanced. Again, this comes back to the attentive sense of arrangement that was put together for the track and being able to perform in a way that feels almost improvised, at certain points.
Soon enough, that guitar starts to really shred. The edginess tones down a little bit because when he starts hitting the higher notes, the guitar sounds slightly less distorted.
This is simply because when you're hitting lower notes on the guitar with this sort of light distortion on there, you're hearing more of the harsher effect of that distortion. When you're hitting the higher notes, it feels a little cleaner, and this works amazingly because he is doing a lot of jazz runs at this point.
You can tell he's having an absolute ball, and that this is absolutely where David is in his zone
The notes flow into each other like water, and he's really able to pull this off flawlessly.
Things then kind of switch up, and the horns take more of the Forefront while the guitars do a deeper, more rhythmic approach.
They come together again, performing different hooks and melodies and before long, everything is incredibly harmonious and bright.
This was such an almost rambunctiously elegant approach to bringing all these instruments together and creating a set of performances that really melt into each other at times and bounce off of each other at other times.
This was such a fun single.
When you listen to it it puts you in the moment with the song. You want to be able to watch the performance live, right in your face.
Perhaps this was actually recorded live in one shot. Well, live in a room anyway. I wasn't there, so I'm not sure how they did track it; however, listening to this makes you want to see them on a stage so you can sort of feel that synergy for yourself.
This is only really because of how that fluctuation of energy is displayed on the record itself.
This was juicy, flavorful, colorful, a little edgy, and had an amazing set of tones that came together to build an atmosphere that felt electric.
Do not miss this one, especially if you are a guitar player.
Remember where you heard it first.