Review by Vince Leigh

Searching is the third release for Canberra-based music artist DMC. The new track is a genre-defying song that harnesses robust melodic components, a semi-melancholic flavoured vocal performance, and marries them to a clean, contemporary and streamlined production.

Searching is a curious track as it very effectively blends many disparate styles, such as pop, hip hop, and light rock to arrive at a very pleasing result. Anchored to a full and potent chorus, with its seductive repetitions and soulful sombre-toned note choices, DMC’s performance fits the sonic landscape here, and although it has quite obviously been through a technological transformation, a sense of his emotional power nonetheless is evident.

The aforementioned stylistic traits make themselves known with subtle flair and are used quite sparingly, such as the hip hop influence in the drum groove, or perhaps a little more plainly, the pop element in the crafting of the chorus melody lines. A ‘rock’ tinge is noticeable via the energy of the track, with its souped-up pace, and more obviously via the dreamy, imploring guitar lines scattered throughout.

The song also benefits from the spaces segmenting the parts, the drops and shifts in focus, providing a surprising and relieving dynamism that echoes the conceit of the lyric. There is a sense of yearning that elevates this track, a resonance that seems to aptly posit the artist’s desirous ambitions at just the right pitch.

This yearning is no doubt linked to the connotations of the word ‘searching’ but it is also revealed by the open nature of the production. With its patchwork design, its palpitating insistence, its thrumming allusion to a vaporous woe and, of course, easily digestible melodic motifs, the song covers a lot of ground, ultimately resulting in a most admirable record and a highly satisfying helping of contemporary pop panache.

And no doubt, DMC will be suitably rewarded for name-checking his home town.

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