Daisy Hicks drops 2 new singles
“2018 has seen a lot of really great releases so far, and among them I’ve been able to listen to and review a handful of decent ones, a few good ones, and maybe one or two really great ones. Not only is “Upside” (from Daisy Hicks) the first really well designed extended play I’ve heard this year, but it’s the first jazz record I’ve really felt comfortable endorsing. I listen to a little bit of everything, but I do consider myself a bit of a snob when it comes to jazz music. Instead of pacifying my thirst for odd time signatures and dexterous, thought-out harmonies with jagged beats and falsetto singing that owes more to indie folk rock than bop, Daisy dishes out a completely different style of smooth jazz that is ego-free and non-synthesized to boot. Is this the singer/songwriter that the genre has been looking for to lead it into the next decade?”
- Sebastian Cole – gashouseradio.com
Pop that leans heavily on the bubblegum and jingle standards of the past simply doesn’t have a place in the future blueprint of what music is going to look and sound like in the next couple of years, and this shouldn’t be coming as a surprise to anyone. As is the case with everything else right now in our pop culture, music is being expanded upon with the technological precision of post-millennium minds, and that has caused the standard to get a lot tougher and content on a large scale to become textured from the surface down. This is, without question, the most fast-paced time for music in history.
And for as fast as things are moving, one artist who isn’t rushing to create her elegantly stylized portrait of harmony and melody is Daisy Hicks, a jazz-minded pop singer whose singles “Upside” and “I Choose You” are generating a small market war between American and European labels eager to compete over her distribution rights. Hicks personifies what it means to be confident in the studio, and she demonstrates as much in both of these songs with a swagger that is coming to be known as her signature quality. With a relaxed ease, she unleashes wave after wave of sonic bliss, each one more stylish than the one that came before it.
Not very many artists are so adept at melding such a diverse array of influences into one streamlined, albeit multilayered, sound profile. There’s a touch of western rhythm and blues here, a little taste of old world jazz there, a spot of worldly slowbeat to tie things together, even the occasional garnish of European pop sparkle. None of it feels like it’s been fractured into smaller pieces and strung back together by Hicks. It’s more like we’re looking into a colorful painting and seeing how each tone lends its character to the others.
Daisy Hicks is composing the soundtrack to a generation of indie artists who are rebelling against the very essence of “rebellion” as it’s come to be known in a pop music world existing in the DIY ethos but not quite abiding by its ten commandments. Hicks understands paradoxical hierarchy in music, but she hasn’t concerned herself with scene politics inside or outside of her latest releases, and I can’t imagine her starting to anytime soon. For artists like herself, the idea that anything else could ever come between her craft and her fingertips isn’t just laughable, it’s borderline offensive.
Anyone who is old enough to remember the 1980’s and the slump of overindulgence that pop music experienced during that decade will recognize a lot of the same hazardous concepts being put into practice one again today, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t artists like Daisy Hicks fighting to keep the integrity of their medium intact. In countless ways, you could argue that she’s coming around at precisely the right moment to perhaps save pop music from itself, if you will. No matter how far she makes it in her greater endeavor, she’s already sown the seeds of a legend that has only just recently begun to be written.
- Sebastian Cole