Piece Of String – RW Hedges

https://wonderfulsound.bandcamp.com/album/year-after-year

Thirty seconds into RW Hedges first release from his latest album Year after Year, the guitar, bass, drums and vocals melt into a moment.

A moment musicians may never achieve in a lifetime of music making.

One where the listener forgets the conscious periphery and the sound becomes an all consuming sensory need.

The moment you say,

‘This is pretty good’.

There’s hints of influence here but it’s hard to locate a particular reference point as Piece of String still manages to sound raw, recent and joyously unfamiliar. 

For all the Kinks, Beatles, Byrds similarities, RW Hedges pulls off that musical alchemy where many of his peers fall short.

I dare anyone to do a detective job on this wistful beauty, and pin down where it came from.

The first thing you’ll want to do after listening to the one minute and fifty nine second track is listen to it again.

Did I just hear that? 

Has the meandering Rickenbacker that could have accompanied a Banana Splits segway really taken me down that dark a path?

Shadows of yearning, an unrequited need, an all-consuming desire that conjures a face glued to a patio window, a hand poised over a locked door.

It’s a HBO box set played out in under two minutes and, like all the best tales, stays with you long after it’s faded away.