Premiere: Basciville balance life with the macabre in new single ‘Unreturned’

Brotherly folk duo Basciville are premiering their new single ‘Unreturned’ on the site today.

Wexford natives Cillian and Lorcan Byrne have always kept folk at the core of their material. It’s their roots, though they have grown and expanded to include indie-blues, jazz and rock into their sound. The band explore their music with the same kind of emotional intensity that an artist like Hozier does, dating right back to 2016 with ‘Sweetheart Rodeo‘.

Now the band releases ‘Unreturned’, their second single of 2019. It’s the follow up to ‘Post-Youth‘ in May.

‘Unreturned’ retains a distinctly gothic feel throughout. The mood is established from moment one, smokey pianos and deadpan percussion, heavy in atmosphere. The lead vocal is soaked in anguish, a delivery that becomes pained when pushed.

While the harmony throughout ‘Unreturned’ suggests a gospel uplift, especially in the pre-chorus, recurring motifs of the dead and the passage of time cut any such uplift down in a moment.

It’s by no means a sullen track, there’s movement and motion aplenty throughout. Chattering strings pull the mix into the higher register. There’s life here, it just seems to co-exist with the more macabre elements the lyircs especially invoke.