Despite the common narrative among some of the more questionable sources of information in the music universe, cosmetics aren’t everything in pop; contrarily, they’re the icing on the cake. If you don’t have substance backing the glitz and gloss of your finish, you can forget about attracting any sort of sustainable following in pop music, at least when it comes to the American market, and it’s certainly true that not every artist is as blessed with the kind of talent for creating watertight songcraft as AV Super Sunshine is.
INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/avsupersunshine/?hl=en
AV’s new single, “Scarecrow (Rock Mix),” melds the simplistic construction of old-school pop/rock with a vividly dreamy harmony at the center of the song, large and hard-charging guitar chords, and an organ accent that ultimately reflects the tone of the lyrical emotion without disrupting the chest-pounding intensity of the percussion. In short, it takes what are essentially the best parts of any given pop single and boils them down to raw fats purposed for indulgent pleasure-seekers exclusively, and after a year like 2022, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting lost in the excesses a player like this one can produce in the right circumstances.
The substance in the rock version of “Scarecrow” lies well beyond the poeticisms and slick hooks a lot of you will immediately look to as linchpins when spinning this track over the fall season, and I would even say that without giving it a couple of close listens, you might miss out on the decadence of what AV actually accomplishes here.
The unrelenting swagger of his performance adds something to the narrative all on its own, but with the nauseating spectrum of different instrumental elements crashing down on us at any single moment, we can never focus exclusively on what his confidence means by itself. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, is allowed to stray from the multifaceted center that is the interplay between verse and vibrant backing band in “Scarecrow (Rock Mix),” which creates a lot more sizzle than it does a desire to hit the skip button after experiencing the climax of the track halfway through the song.
I was already feeling eager about checking out some fresh live music in the next couple of months, but after hearing this new release from AV Super Sunshine, I’m specifically excited to hear and see what he’s going to do when he hits the stage in the near future. You can’t fake the kind of charisma he puts into his work, and if this is just a fragment of what he can do when the energy is on his side (as is the case with anything recorded inside the four walls of a studio), one cannot help but want for more in-person.
AV is at the top of his class in pretty much every department, and in this rock-themed mix of “Scarecrow,” he makes it difficult for even the staunchest of critics to take any element of his artistic design to task. It’s his and his alone, and you can’t debate that with a performance of this kind.
Rachel Townsend