“Stay” (SINGLE) by Jam Live

A plaintive acoustic guitar finds itself entwined with a vocal as soft as the finest silk as we listen in on the opening verses of “Stay” by JamLive, but despite the charming nature of this introduction to the track, the chill-factor only swells with each passing moment in this all-new single and music video. Despite being accompanied by a slew of cerebral songs from their contemporaries that are both intriguing and halfhearted, JamLive’s “Stay” stands out as one of the better compositions of its kind this summer, and not because of its well-varnished construction alone.

Though the bones of this track are undeniably string-based, the vocals are always the main focus of our attention. There’s something profoundly ominous about the way the harmonies swirl around us near the 3:00 mark in the song, and while this isn’t the most churning moment in “Stay,” it’s certainly one of the greater segments of fireworks that affected me in my initial sit-down with the single. The music video is just as spellbinding as its source material is, and in an era that has seen an increasing artistic divide between visual and aural mediums, this is nothing to scoff at by any means.

JamLive Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamLive3

If “Stay” is a fair sampling of what JamLive can do when there aren’t any creative barriers to come between their ideas and the audience they seek to entertain, this latest single won’t be their lone headline-maker in the 2020s. To westerners, the Irish underground has been fairly quiet for a few years now, but thanks to the efforts of JamLive and their peers, we’re being reminded that the country’s indie circuit is anything but dead. If anything, I think songs like “Stay” verify the authenticity and continuous vitality of an Irish underground as fertile today as it was some thirty years ago.

Mindy McCall