“Mama” by My Luv Notes

URL: https://www.myluvnotes.com/

You don’t have to be a professional music critic to be able to tell the difference between an artist who is truly committed to the play versus an artist who is fully committed to the pay, and in My Luv Notes, we find a singer/songwriter who belongs in the former camp without question. In her latest single “Mama,” My Luv Notes dispenses elegant verses that are saturated with raw emotion and come cutting through a playful string groove packaged in understated radiance. There’s so much passion in her crooning, so much pain in her aching delivery, but we’re never dragged asunder by her elegiac tone. The greatest storytellers in this world have often by those who use more than just words to convey a narrative, and while I’m not ranking My Luv Notes as the poet laureate of her scene, she’s certainly got a way about her that I rarely see in this business.

As previously stated, the emotive textures in “Mama” are immensely sharp and unforgiving in a few spots, but the linguistics employed by our singer are hardly unrefined. She’s articulate to a fault here, clarifying her statement in the plainest of terms possible, and ignoring poetic shortcuts that would, arguably, have made the song a little more stylish in structure. All of that aside, honestly, I don’t think appealing to the masses was the point of recording this track. I’ve never gotten the impression from My Luv Notes that making music that fits in with the mainstream is one of her top priorities; on the contrary, it would seem to me that she’s a songwriter who lives by a more erudite credo that is steeped in creating for the sake of expression exclusively.

There are a lot of layers to take apart in this song, and they’re each integral to creating the atmospheric melody that drives the string parts from start to finish. The violin is delicately arranged between the gaps of sonic space that are unutilized by the guitar, and though there are no drums to define the beat, the cadence of the lyrical execution actually serves as a startlingly on-point foundation for the rhythm of the track. I would have made the vocal a little quieter in the mix than what was ultimately decided upon for this single, but at the same time I can see where My Luv Notes wanted to keep it front and center in this simpleminded folk song.

2019 is producing some really excellent music that is worth writing home about, and My Luv Notes’ “Mama” is definitely among some of the more evocative adult contemporary material that I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing thus far. “Mama” doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is, and in an age of melodic muscle flexes and plastic-faceted pop artificiality, it’s a refreshing thirst-quencher amidst an arid time in the history of western music. She’s not quite ready for the primetime stage yet, but I think that this track demonstrates how far My Luv Notes has come in her short time on the scene.

GOOGLE PLAY: https://play.google.com/music/preview/Thbxnglzgndhqrwoqao7gqvpjxm?play=1

Mindy McCall