Love cannot be represented by a pendulum or a scale. It is the colour black which holds all of the other colours of the rainbow in the centre of its palm. This is perhaps what makes love one of the most terrifying of all emotions – it is just as gentle as it is brash. But despite love’s ability to be, at times, supremely difficult, it is also often worth those indomitable risks. Love has many pitfalls, but many also believe that it should be fought for.
Singer-songwriter Will Anderson, the frontman of the psychedelic rock group Hotline TNT, knows this reality of love all too well. It is exactly those tough topics that the artist hopes to tackle with his band’s latest single “Protocol”. “This song is about falling on a metaphorical sword – sometimes you just gotta hold an L even when in your heart of hearts you know it’s not fair. Saving the relationship is worth taking the blame now and again,” Anderson said.
With driving guitars, the heavy shoegaze sound builds until it reaches a satisfying apex at the beginning of this project. Smooth production meets powerful stacked instrumentation throughout the track, and it lays the foundation for an inexplicably balanced rock noise. With heavy rhythmic layers and heavy blown-out distortion, the song is both freeing and rife with melancholy undertones, as if Anderson is singing it all with a sad smile. Altogether, “Protocol” comes to present itself as a dense psychedelic haze alive with distorted guitars that move forward and build upwards, soaring into the night.
