New artist of the week: serpentwithfeet

New artist of the week: serpentwithfeet

What: Experimental monumental love songs

Where: Baltimore

Why: Life is complicated. Nothing is black and white. The divide between good and evil is not absolute. Being an occultist and a heart-on-sleeve singer does not have to be mutually exclusive.

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Josiah Wise is the American artist that presents that dichotomy. The 29-year-old has tattooed his face with a pentagram and the words "suicide" and "heaven" yet possessing a voice that could melt many a soul, not with brimstone, but with beauty.

There is no surprise that the artist that presents himself as indefinable makes music that is hard to define, at first. Drawing on a gospel choir boy voice and drawing his musical tones from the world of experimental, classical and R&B, a sound begins to emerge, and it gets deeper under the skin to the core of things than distracting appearances.

"With you I can empty myself of all my rivers, and become a remarkable sky," Wise sings on recent single Bless Ur Heart in an operatic quavering voice that could, on the right day, open the heavens.

His early songs were towering monuments built with majestic horns and orchestral builds but as his debut album proper Soil arrives on June 8th, and the picture emerges of a songwriter who performs with tenderness and fanaticism over songs produced by Katie Gately, that match his monumental sentiments. Serpentwithfeet is music of the heart and speaks of love everlasting and dramatic, emphatic and full of shade.

[ https://youtu.be/x7VtBSanueQ  ]

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