Jeremy Rice “Arriianne” (PREMIERE)

Jeremy Rice doesn’t waste a stitch of time in his new single “Arriianne” before laying the big guitar melodies on as thick as he can and lacing his signature lush vocal into the reverberating rhythm that ensues. As surreal as it is jittery, the music video for the song is just as gripping as its source material is, and by the time that we get into Rice’s second stanza of lyrics, it becomes next to impossible for us to avoid the contagiously confident grooves and all of the danceable energy that they’re spreading like wildfire. “Arriianne” gets us started with a bang and never slows down for a second in its three and a half minutes of playing time.

The bassline is monolithic here, but it doesn’t sound excessive next to the other elements in the song at all. The drums collide with the low-end tones and force a lot of tension into the front of the track, but that ends up working to Jeremy Rice’s favor – with all of the intensity bubbling up beneath him, his powerful slew of poetic words in the chorus becomes even more cathartic than it already would have been. It’s calculated, but the construction of this piece is as far from cold as you can get without going to hell and back.

Thanks to the physicality of the master mix, there aren’t any speedbumps in the fluidity of the percussion, strings or Rice’s own velvety vocal. You could possibly make the argument that it would have been a bit more prudent to back off of the distortion on the bass, but I don’t think that I would change a single thing about the way that producers chose to treat this number. Jeremy Rice brings a lot of passion with him into the studio, and it’s reflected in the very presence of his band’s melodicism in “Arriianne.”

With an uncorked bottle of champagne and a riff as sharp as a piece of broken glass, “Arriianne” comes to a feverish conclusion, leaving in its wake a trail of echoing beats that would make even the most discriminating of music enthusiasts quite curious to hear the remainder of Jeremy Rice’s forthcoming debut solo album. Too often in the last few years, alternative artists with a knack for conjuring up easygoing grooves have shied away from embracing the pop influences in their sound, but that’s not the case with Rice’s latest look. He’s jumping into these chic pop melodies with both feet, and giving us plenty of reasons to keep an eye on his upcoming output.

Mindy McCall