"Highway to the Lost & Found" by The Rising
Review
True to their mission, The Rising are back with a new single "Highway to the Lost & Found" (due out on 3rd September) just over a month after the excellent "Break The Chains". Both tracks will eventually be also found on the ‘No Hope Without Love' EP in October: indeed this will be the fourth single from that EP.
Equally sticking to their guns, this latest song sounds nothing like its predecessor nor indeed anything else they have previously shared with us. This commitment to exploring the breadth of their musical interests and enthusiasms and keep their audience both entertained by the variety and startled by each successive release is laudable and they certainly avoid the trap of change for change's sake as every one to date has borne their trademark integrity and each one stands up thoroughly on its own merits.
This time round, the "rock" button is firmly depressed and it's a joy to hear both Chris on his guitar and Chantelle with her vocals let completely off the leash and allowed to rock out in their own unique ways. This is The Rising as you've heard before nor conceived of. As with the other recent tracks, they performed it all themselves bar the drums which arrived from Nashville courtesy of Chris Brush and they carried out all the production magic themselves at their own Renegade Maverick Studio with mastering by Pete Maher.
I loved it.
Titled after a comment Chris once made in an interview about careers in music and seeking to encapsulate the highs and lows of the journey, I expected from the title something similar to the bleak landscapes of say Ry Cooder or "Nebraska" type Springsteen songs, but in fact the song is more redolent of the bluesy bars and juke joints along the road than the wide open countryside between them. Spiced lyrically with anecdotes of life on the road, the song apparently came to the duo easily and made its life debut at their recent "Pub in the Park" gig in Warwick. It would not surprise me in the least if the song did not become a fixture in their set for a long while to come.
This is yet another facet of The Rising and as with the various styles they have previously embraced, they do it really well. While previously they very much identified with a country/pop crossover, it's interesting that their current attempt at self description is "whilst their music may cover a range of genres they are perhaps best described as blending the fresh-faced sounds of today's Pop/Rock with Modern Country Rock Stylings": quite a long and loose definition which reflects the nature of their releases over the past year or so, many of which have drifted quite a distance from their country departure point. It's a nice problem to have when you can't quite pin down your own music nor pigeonhole it and hopefully the media and audiences instead of being fazed by this (mainstream media don't half like the security of knowing which box an artist is in) will celebrate this. I know I do.
This is also a most timely opportunity too to publicly congratulate Chantelle on her successfully completing her degree in music and audio production at Queen's University, Belfast.
