“Nothing Neutral” - The Drawn Out
Song Review: “Nothing Neutral”
There’s so much to like about The Drawn Out. Their sound strikes me as nostalgic emo and something I’d blast on repeat via my IPod shuffle while I was walking to the mall in the 90’s/00’s. Their sound also reminds me of something I heard Wesley Shultz of The Lumineers say in reference to his earliest songwriting with Jeremiah Fraites. That is, for most of their early work in 00’s, they aimed for deliberate - not flashy - instrumentation to see how much feeling they could convey with less, which allowed Wesley’s vocals to shine on his early records. Here, in “Nothing Neutral,” you can feel a version of this deliberate(ness?) songwriting concept at work, as The Drawn Out deliver precise intentional instrumentation that doesn’t overwhelm your senses, but still feels huge. I first showed “Nothing Neutral” to my emo-loving and Paramore-fan wife, it only took her about four-to-six seconds before she asked me for the band’s name.
It starts off without notes and this unique heartbeat, palm-muted-esc churning that feels like someone created a BPM for the audience to naturally follow, as these beautifully-ghostly vocals start singing:
I had a dream once you showed up
It was glory and breakthrough
Woke myself crying in my sleep
I came to and it left me
The guitarist doesn’t come in strumming but playing these precise drive-y guitar notes that follow a one-two-three-one-two pattern. It’s coupled with these interesting syncopated flowing drums that throw you in a trance and provide a foundation to highlight the powerful haunting vocals. And The Drawn Out’s vocalist is truly fantastic; their vocals don’t need to be stacked in production or tuned. They just need space and will be a hook in tone alone.
I should also add the arrangement is top notch. The first chorus (pre-chorus?) doesn’t go for an epic sonic swing, and instead, the already precise-isolated instrumentation drops out, as the vocalist with a well-toned second vocal harmony sing belt-worthy lines (“Maybe it's real and maybe I've gone too far”). The patterned, spacey guitar and drum notes fall back in, and the song feels like it’s moving towards something. You can feel this movement in the substance of the second verse, as the lyrics become slightly more biting, but also the lyrics phonetically sound “good” to make the song feel like it’s flowing downhill with tense energy. E.g., I dig the last stanza in the second verse because the sounds are easily sung, flow throughout the mouth, and fall into that anamorphic category of just the “right” cadence for the song:
I'm in his backseat and I'll watch him
He will haunt me and I'll let him
Cause I'm too tired to fight it
So do what you want, now I won't stop it
The finish line or destination appears to be the bridge/actual chorus (“You’re everything beautiful / You’re everything hard”) and provides a wall of sound that’s the bomb to the song’s slow harmonic fuse. It’s super cool and well-placed, and on par for “Nothing Neutral”’s tonal progression. The Drawn Out have 20,000 streams on “Nothing Neutral,” but I can’t help think another 200 million folks would quickly add it to their library if they heard it. The Drawn Out has a clear talent for writing a song, understanding how to use space in an arrangement, and timing. I’m thoroughly excited to review the rest of their catalog.
TLDR: If daydreaming was a sport, "Nothing Neutral” would be a PED. In it, the Drawn Out capture a timeless sound from the days when bands like Three Doors Down (RIP Brad), Paramore, Evanescence played on my brother’s radio, while we were whipping around Appalachian roads in his unreasonably loud jeep. I know that description feels oddly specific, but good music does that — transports you to a specific moment in your life like a portal. And The Drawn Out’s “Nothing Neutral” is an arguable emo masterpiece. When it comes on, I’m lost.
Follow and find The Drawn Out’s music here: https://thedrawnout.com