Amilia K. Spicer – Lightning
URL: https://www.amiliakspicer.com/
“Lightning” is the newest single from Amilia K. Spicer’s full length album Wow and Flutter. It has a slowly evolving lyrical grace with pensive piano lines and imaginative drumming amping up the dramatic potential without ever risk heavy handedness. Spicer’s vocals show a lot of different sides on Wow and Flutter, but she adopts a slow-burning yearn in her voice on this song that conveys its age old passions in a particularly simmering light. Spicer’s musical acumen is self evident after an initial spin, but her unique command and control of language gives those aforementioned age old desires an individual spin they might otherwise lack in lesser hands. The production does an outstanding job of maintaining a productive balance between the various instruments and rendering each musical and vocal detail with an evocative amount of detail. Spicer’s talents, even at such an early point in her career, seem astonishingly complete and “Lightning” is an excellent example of how deeply she can affect her listeners.
Much of the song is predicated on a weaving of soulful piano lines and powerfully rhythmic drumming. It has an ideal running time and the instruments are arranged in such a way that they share the same sonic space without ever flattening each other out. These are clearly players well versed in the idea that the notes you don’t play are more important than those you do and “Lightning”, despite its electric title, has a meditative feel with well orchestrated crescendos that never bite off more than can chew. It isn’t a stretch to call it moody and that atmosphere nicely dovetails into something beyond yearning… a deep need still not quite fulfilled. The song hits all the right emotional points with the sort of artistry the subject matter typically fails to garner this late in the history of pop music.
These individual voices only come along every so often. Spicer’s lyrical prowess and his vocal abilities come together in such a way that she reclaims the subject of longing and desire in a manner no one will readily associate with another. It emerges, first and foremost, through her phrasing – she dramatizes the experiences within the lyric with a breathy tone of sensuous awe. Her voice certainly has a bluesy arc possessed by few other performers today, but it’s a voice with the talent to occupy any stylistic landscape. The lyrics are written with the same sense of muscular economy found in the musical arrangement and couple significant concrete details with more general imagery with great results. “Lightning” is one of the best songs on Wow and Flutter and merits a high profile release as one of the album’s singles. Amilia K. Spicer’s travels and exposure to a life well lived are being recast as transformative art with an enormous capacity for entertaining her audience and providing valuable catharsis.
YOU TUBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/amiliakspicer
Lance Wright