Bryn Ryan VanDyke Drops New Single/Video

“Do you listen? To the voices in your head even when what they just said you don’t believe it? Do you see it? Or let the doubts cloud your sight, keep you from taking flight?” croons a seductive Bryn Ryan VanDyke over the main groove in her new single “Go Long,” much of her vocal channeling the eroticized flow of the melody in no uncertain language. Everything in this song and its lyric video has been designed to draw us closer to the soul of the harmonies, no matter what their point of origin is, and through means as technical as they are tightly wound, Bryn Ryan VanDyke gets us stuck in her web of sonic romanticism like few others could in this performance. There’s no escaping the aural materials comprising her love, nor the passions they would inspire in any given audience.  

The chills originate with this singer’s voice, but with the addition of a swelling pop backdrop in the latter half of the song, there’s never a moment in which the singers aren’t doing their part to make Bryn Ryan VanDyke’s vision a complete one. The intimacy of the lyrics bleeds into the music seamlessly thanks to the liberal mixing style in play here, and although I don’t think we needed as much from the bass towards the end of “Go Long,” I understand the desire to keep a steady piece of muscularity in the instrumentation.  

VanDyke tends to be a pretty detail-oriented girl with her production style, and in this sense, you could say that her new single is similar to a lot of the more sophisticated sounds her peers have cut before now. The one big difference is the underlying surreal bend to the verses, which I would trace back to her influences in soft pop as well as the increased pressure to move in a postmodern direction a lot of indie musicians are feeling at the moment. This isn’t a forced track, but the creator is acknowledging a present trend and doing her part to interpret it as organically as she can.  

The lyric video for “Go Long” is a lot more minimalistic than the actual song on its own, but that’s partly why I found it to be such an interesting and conceptual document from the start. I get the feeling that VanDyke wants us to appreciate the conflict between the muted tone of the imagery and the soundtrack in this release, primarily to enjoy how elegantly the two opposites can coexist for the duration of the video’s running time. Even when there’s an aesthetical contradiction, it has a purpose in this young woman’s discography, which is just not true of her many underground competitors at the moment.  

I’ve yet to come away from this single feeling disappointed, and I think that “Go Long” might be the most well-rounded work out of this player’s scene all autumn long. Don’t get me wrong – the instrumental construct is as responsible for this song potentially becoming a hit as the composer herself is, but what it tells us about the future for Bryn Ryan VanDyke is maybe a little more important than what it’s saying about her present. She’s going places bigger than her scene will ever be able to compensate for, and that’s clear when listening to this single.  

Mindy McCall