Reed Stewart is back with new Single/Video

BANDCAMP: https://reedstewart.bandcamp.com/

If you’ve ever had one of those dreams that felt more like a collection of scenes and sounds taken from moments scattered throughout your day to day life, you’re likely going to find the music video for the new Reed Stewart single “Batterie” to be one of the more intriguingly surreal efforts to debut out of the American underground this September. Instrumentally speaking, “Batterie” is as eclectic as any other Stewart composition, though it possesses a jazz-influenced discordance to its foundation that just might be one of the more existential backdrops he’s employed thus far in his young career. From a visual perspective, the video itself is just as much of a postmodern treat, basking in its own eccentricities and even adding a multi-interpretive aesthetic to its source material via the bold imagery it sports from start to finish. I wouldn’t say that this is going to be everyone’s cup of tea this fall, but for those of us who appreciate a left-field beat, this is some of the best stuff I’ve heard since Ethan Gold’s ultra-sharp Expanses (Teenage Synthstrumentals).

The music here has a very refined feel to it, as though even the tiniest of its moving parts were deliberately stylized as to get a big reaction out of anyone listening, but there’s something quite DIY in nature about the construction of the video. It’s not a straight up nod to punk minimalism, but there’s literally no filler, fluff or unnecessary indulgences (other than the core avant-gardism comprising the premise) included in the shots here.

I get the impression that Stewart was trying to capture the essence of two worlds in “Batterie” – the lovably hesitant and the heroically uninhibited – and in fusing together the video and its soundtrack with such obvious points of contrast, he was able to do exactly what he set out to. That’s something that just can’t be said for many of his well-bankrolled peers in mainstream pop, not to mention for the bulk of his contemporaries in the underground. He’s found the perfect formula for making controlled chaos translate into melodic, thought-provoking musicality, and that’s not easy for even the most talented of professionals to pull off.

I only started getting into the collective works of Mr. Reed Stewart just recently, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t digging the experimental direction he’s taking his music in at the moment. I think he’s got a lot of raw potential that can be exploited even more than it is in “Batterie,” but more than anything else, I walk away from this video feeling like Stewart is well on his way to doing just that. This guy has made a lot of progress in a very short amount of time, and if he’s able to keep the pace that he’s had for this last year through the first half of the 2020s, he’s going to see a lot more success from both sides of the dial moving ahead. I’ll be following his journey, and I recommend that you do the same.

Michael Rand