Source: Album Artwork
Zac Farro has come a long way since his days playing the drums with Paramore. His latest project HalfNoise has now released its third album Sudden Feeling, a record written, produced, and performed by Farro alone. Sudden Feeling is an addictive breed of electro-pop. Injected with synth and colourful, charged bursts of autotune, the album is retro and glorious.
Sudden Feeling opens with ‘Know The Feeling’, a track saturated with intricate production and feel-good vibes. Farro’s sound is universal: it’s artistic, easy-listening music. The result is something comparable to LA-based four-piece Transviolet. Like Transviolet, HalfNoise’s production is so powerful that it becomes an instrument in its own right. Without these abstract additions, Sudden Feeling would have been far from extraordinary.
Alas, Farro took a route far from American rock and built something intrinsically inventive. This theme continues throughout the album, with tracks like ‘Leaving’ infused with awkwardness in their instrumentation.
Sudden Feeling is dynamic and entirely immersive. Shorter tracks like ‘Telephone’ are scattered throughout, adding new depth to the already abstract record. ‘Telephone’—which clocks in at a little over a minute long—is breezy, relaxed, and repeat-worthy. Then as if he hadn’t explored it enough, Farro’s accompanying video is a flawless representation of Sudden Feeling‘s vintage vibe.
Directed by multimedia artist Mike Kludge, the ‘Telephone’ video is inoffensively retro. The images define ‘psychedelic’ and bring a new, trippy level to the track. Kludge’s use of vintage video gear is ironically refreshing, leaving the video in no way hindered by it’s shorter span.
‘Sudden Feeling’, ‘Always’, and ‘Love You Back’ are admittedly classic electro-pop tracks. But HalfNoise is comfortably sitting in a genre without falling into the imitation trap. Sudden Feeling might be a thousand miles from Farro’s previous pursuits, but it’s a genre he clearly knows well. Who knew auto-tune could sound this good?
