“Pariah” is blissfully easy to listen to, the music has a beautiful ambiance and features a simple yet emotionally effective soundscape progression that sets the scene brilliantly. On top of this, Winterstate ’s leading voices and music have the mellow, strong yet sincere tone to carry the sentiment of the song in the most authentic and smooth manner possible.
Winterstate is a well talented, amazing bunch of souls who were born to do music. WINTERSTATE is led by singer-songwriter Kelvin Killmon (Seattle, WA) and multi-instrumentalist Alex Ortberg (Rochester, MN). The pair met as students at Berklee College of Music’s campus in Valencia, Spain, and have continued to write and record new songs together inspired by feel-good bands like The Killers, Mae, Anberlin, Incubus, and Foo Fighters.
The fusion of influences on this release is superb, or perhaps it is the freedom from such that allows Winterstate to create and express themselves in a new and greatly appealing way. There’s a definite sense of originality and character to this track, which offers something fresh and strangely addictive for audiences to embrace.
As modern music production goes, there has to be something about the sound that seems unheard of before – something that seems completely new. In this case, that’s just about everything you hear around you. The unique way in which the artist has combined these sometimes scattered, sometimes smooth synths, with an undeniably organic and somewhat unusual sounding beat, a distorted, and a notably simplistic progression of chords and keys running throughout the backdrop, all makes for an ambiance that just works, and beautifully.
Winterstate presents audiences with warmth and realness that will be long remembered after listening. The upfront realness of the performance and the instrumentation also indicates that a live show is likely to be every bit as mesmerizing and wonderful as the recording – in fact, most probably, a whole lot more so. The song doesn’t try to be anything it’s not, and in being what it is, and saying what it says, this idea of who the artist is and how the music came to be is portrayed in a greatly appealing way. Despite the professional and satisfying structure and production, it all comes through as a song that needed to be written, a topic that needed to be expressed, rather than something that simply intended to impress. This heartfelt depth is the very thing that leads listeners to connect so intensely with certain music, and it works beautifully here.
