Near Death Experience’s single, “Shake,” arrived not so much as music, but as a sudden, urgent insistence. It’s London psych-rock-soul alright, but brewed with something fiercely immediate, demanding attention like a ringing telephone in an empty room. The core quartet – Ian Whiteling guiding the trip with vocals and guitar fuzz, Joshua Van Ness laying down a heartbeat that feels both frantic and locked-in, Amar Grover’s bass weaving thick, essential patterns, and Jack Dawkins’ sax cutting through like a startled exclamation – they cook up a potent concoction.
It’s got that irresistible funk gravity, pulling you onto its wavelength. But listen closer. Whiteling isn’t just singing; he’s pleading, maybe bargaining with the universe, for a total overhaul. This ‘shaking’ isn’t gentle encouragement; it’s a full-body neurological event craved, a seismic shift demanded to escape the “nightmares” and reach for elusive “dreams.” There’s a raw need here, the kind that leaves fingerprints.
Dawkins’ saxophone lines, sometimes smooth, sometimes jagged, momentarily made me think of those bizarre anatomical drawings from the 17th century – intricate, slightly grotesque, revealing hidden workings. It’s a strange thought, I know, but the song excavates something primal, this intense desire to be utterly remade, “lost in you,” as the lyrics admit. It pushes and pulls, a surrender that feels simultaneously like a desperate lunge forward.
This track doesn’t soothe; it vibrates. It understands that sometimes transformation requires not a nudge, but a vigorous, soul-rattling disruption. It leaves you feeling the phantom limb of a reality you desperately want changed. What else possesses that kind of power, besides maybe love, or terror, or a truly magnificent groove?
