STROMPOLOS goes for silence, sparseness, and sincerity. In “Fall,” the Chicago-born, Mississippi-raised artist delivers a soft blow to the gut, an acoustic ballad that could easily pass for a confession rather than a performance.
A cut taken from the cinematic concept album “In the Time of Lies and Isolation,” “Fall“ is an instant of raw unwinding. No frills and filters. Only the aching echo of a human voice, a pluck of strings at their gentlest. And the song is intentionally raw, almost brutally so, as if the listener is overhearing an internal monologue that oscillates between collapse and clarity.
The music functions more like mythology than memoir, leaving room for listeners to fill in the emotional topography with their own concerns and experiences. “Falling is flying. “Because it’s just the other way,“ the track almost seems to whisper, evoking the complexities and contradictions of transformation, the tumultuous pain of becoming someone new.
“Fall“ is lean but cinematic. The sparseness of the arrangement makes every breath, every change in vocal affect, that much more amplified. There’s a beauty in its economic evidence that STROMPOLOS knows the power of what not to say. And in that quiet, he’s made a safe place for sadness to spread its wings
This is a connection. It makes no effort to entertain, only to resonate, reminding you that you are not alone in your breaking and rebuilding. It’s for anyone who has watched themselves transform and wondered who would catch them on the way down. With “Fall”, STROMPOLOS is throwing a rope to anyone making their way through their internal existential freefall. This is soul music created by an artist who has no problem pouring his soul into his art.
Connect with STROMPOLOS on Instagram – @chrisstrompolos
