“Recover” by IZ.M.B

In her new single “Recover,” IZ.M.B. allows theatrical harmonies to take center stage in a way that a lot of her peers would have been too intimidated to try, and from where I’m sitting, the compositional scheme exhibits her talents like few other stylistic offerings could have. Rather than issuing something soft and gentle to complement the honest tone of her vocal, this is a player who wants to embrace a bit of a challenge – a groove that is both consuming and dependent on the fluidity of the harmonies to really serve as a foundation – and for what I want in a lead singer, IZ.M.B. hits all the right notes here.

The epic push of the percussion is one of the main points of interest that captured my attention right off the bat when I listened to “Recover” for the first time, and although I wouldn’t say it’s louder than the melodic instrumentation, there are moments where its profile feels just a bit more indulgent than what a lot of other artists would have been comfortable experimenting with. In more ways than one, IZ.M.B. wants to push the envelope beyond what her competition is able to keep up with in this single, and it’s not simply for the sake of being a standout in her scene.

This vocal is at times powerful enough to crush the bassline’s presence in the master mix, and yet it’s often such a beacon of vulnerability that it’s hard to fathom how it’s moving as much weight around in this track as it is. It’s entirely organic, but at the same time, you can tell that this is a player who knows her way around the studio and can exploit some of the understated elements of her sound to make a bombastic experience more palatable to the casual listener.

I really like the sway of the music as we segue into the midsection of “Recover,” and the transition from one act to the next here really signifies a deeper compositional complexity that I want IZ.M.B. to work with more as she finds her footing on the mainstream side of the dial. She’s got the crossover appeal down for sure in this performance, and now it’s just a matter of matching her aesthetics with the market that’s going to love them more than any other will.

If you like empowering pop music that flirts with rock themes but isn’t totally steeped in distortion, you just might find “Recover” to be one of the leaner and meaner numbers you’re going to listen to this month. IZ.M.B. is still finding her place in the underground hierarchy, but she isn’t acting like a scrub in this piece; actually, she sounds like someone who can set the pace for both herself and some of the similarly influenced artists trying to make a statement for themselves at the moment. She’s got a lot of potential, and it’s being molded the right way in “Recover.”

Mindy McCall