Newcastle’s youngest exportr, 18-year-old brndxn, returns to team up with his Gold Coast equivalent, SIONE, on his latest track WITCHHUNT. Now a signed artist, to global label SONO Music Group, WITCHHUNT marks a new step for the budding artist, as he moves into a more confident, slef-reliant creation space – having mixed and mastered the track entirely himself, and delves further into a pop-driven direction. Dipping his toes in some more hyperpop and indie production with previous release wish you my best and time like that, brndxn makes it clear he knows where he;s going now, and the experimentation is past. He does this while maintaining an alternative flair to the track, with a brakence style breakdown in the hook rather than some more ‘commercial pop’ synths, but in a way that doesn’t see him fitting into the new wave of ‘brakence clones’ that have risen up through SoundCloud after the recent success of his newest album, hypochondirac. brnxdn can wear his influences on his sleeve without ripping them off, with a vocal tone unlike anybody else in the genre, and a distincly neutral accent, neither Australian or particulaly American in sound, as exports like The Kid Laroi have made us come to expect. These factors are part of what will guarantee brndxn’s longetivy, as these hyperpop trends come and go with the populiarty of the artist’s as they have with Aries, and Glaive, and with them so do the artists trying to replicate them.
In our last piece on the novacastian (on previous single time like that), I made reference to his ‘resentful frat-esque lyrcism’ similar to that of American pop-punk and midwest, and we see this return in his writing style again in WITCHHUNT, proving to be a key element of brndxn’s writing style. Lines like “Lit torch, pitchforks/They’re after me/Dark force, rich dorks/It’s the prophecy” wouldn’t sound out of place coming from the mouth of Mark Hoppus or Mike Kinsella. This goes full circle with his knack for little humourous bars, proving he can say it like it while simultaneasouly not taking himself too seriously, when he says “I don’t brag about how many boats I own”. This brings us to the lyrical themes, depicting brndxn’s years as “the poor kid at a pruvate school”, and the trivality of everything assocated with status, and the meaningless of it all he sees in those with shallow personalities. This could be taken as an indication of triumph, as brndxn tells Indie Is Not A Genre about a substantial amount of his peers who used to look down upon him now add him to their Spotify playlists, without ever having to buy a boat.
SIONE adds a husky, more capable vocal to it all, and reinforces brndxn’s writing with displeased lines like “I’m the statue that they choose to piss on/Cause none of them give a shit” really saying everything he needs to say. The Queensland native breaks up the track perfectly, which without him would feel too long, benefitting from a shorter runtime, but keeps the listener engaged thanks to his immediate bouncy energy the second his verse begins. The pair did what they had to survive and survived the witch hunt, now all eyes will be on them with their next move as they continue to turn heads.
WITCHHUNT is now avaible to stream and download on all platforms.
