The new single from San Diego-by-way-of-New Jersey artist and producer Kakuyon, Evergreen, Maroon Too arrives on a cloud of pillow-soft synths, and tight elastic bass lines. Kakuyon’s vocal soars with a timeless quality — melodic, with just a little friction. It feels like a Frank Ocean track, only with some hybrid of Sting and Freddie Mercury on vocals.
In short, Evergreen, Maroon Too is a psychedelic, dreamy slice of alt-R&B-pop. It starts solid, and gets even better. Fuzzy guitar embellishes things with an organic, Miguel-like sense of west coast soul, and at the one-minute-thirty mark, we get crisp snares, rimshots and reverb, giving the sensation of something thick-and-heavy suddenly lifting off the ground and ascending into orbit.
The audible experimentation here on Evergreen, Maroon Too feels appropriate for a song that is all about ambiguity. The song is about finding difficulty in reading someone’s true colours, but is also a deliberate nod to the musician’s red-green colourblindness… And the music itself is difficult to pin-down and define.