Listen: Lighter, Now! by Caleb L’Etoile

Having appeared on BlackPlastic.co.uk just two months ago with his distinctive garage-influenced track, Two More Years, Virginia artist and producer Caleb L’Etoile is back with his latest single.

Where Two More Years was an experimental, grimy slice of melancholic electronic music, Lighter, Now! is something quite different. The lyrics here still deal with darkness, depicting abusive relationships, but in contrast to Two More Years, L’Etoile finds brightness here.

Warm synth tones establish a reflective, hopeful sound as Caleb’s vocals tumble rapidly, a flowing stream-of-consciousness. Painful memories rear their head, and then provide the foundations for the lightness Caleb seeks, as he asks, ‘Why can’t we make it all, a bit lighter?’. The pacing stumbles briefly, and yet it feels almost appropriate, the rush and imperfection of healing and processing._

Lighter, Now is the first single from Caleb L’Etoilre’s upcoming record, You Gathered Friction. Check out Caleb's live video for Lighter, Now! below:

Listen: Two More Years by Caleb L’Etoile

Starting with the kind of garage-influenced percussion leveraged by Hot Chip, Caleb L’Etoile’s Two More Years is a song made of just two notes.

The whole record rides along in the same grunge-y, dirty synth pattern. With L’Etoile’s vocals layered into the mix, and atop one another, the simplistic nature of his performance contrasts to the distorted chaos of the instrumentation.

The combination of the vocal and instrumental elements provide the song a kind of internal innocence. As a song, Two More Years is about the experience of losing someone important from your life, and imagining running into them again. Caleb’s vocals have the feel of an internal monologue, his mind ticking over as he envisions bumping into this person… the mental exercise of trying something on and exploring how it would feel. Does my pulse race? Do we click back into a familiar repartee? Does this still hurt?

Overall, Caleb L’Etoile has made a remarkably affecting piece of music out of something surprisingly minimal. The rawness he employs only adds to the sense of emotional honesty.