Levek - “Look on the Bright Side”
I would hope that I could say this about every piece in my Top Tunes feature, but this is a song that feels rare. Stylistically, its golden soul affectation is something you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a home-recording indie singer-songwriter, but it’s not so strange that it seems like a knowing wink, a pastiche of cool-via-uncool-coolness (if that makes any sense). Instead, it showcases a fine craftsmanship and natural ease far beyond its humble budget. The rhythm section is smooth and slinky, the guitars are funky and fresh, and the touches of violin and mellotron are gorgeously understated. As different instruments trade off accenting David Levesque’s raspy melodic turns, it’s easy to miss the fact that the song never really repeats itself. “Look on the Bright Side” is everything good soul music can be: fun, earthy, sensuous, poignant, and ultimately life-affirming.
Levek - “Look on the Bright Side”
Buy the 7” here.
Can I admit that I’m a little embarrassed to be so late to this party? If it were any other artist from any other town it wouldn’t matter, but David Levesque is a Gainesvillian—we surely have a handful of mutual friends and, heck, probably frequented the same bars and restaurants when I lived up there (it’s not exactly a bustling metropolis). As his tunes started showing up on well-read blogs, the name always caught my eye since, even if I couldn’t remember exactly where, I knew I had seen it on local show fliers or heard it at parties or something. My point is that if I were actually any good at this whole finding-cool-new-bands or supporting-the-local-scene thing, I would hopefully have been talking about Levek for a while. Of course, none of that really matters for anyone besides me and I bet this kind of thing happens to people in New York or Austin or Portland or L.A. all the time, so maybe instead of talking about “Look on the Bright Side” because I feel stupid and uncool, I should talk about it because it’s just a great freakin’ song.
One of the things I like most about it is how, in spite of being such a well-crafted chunk of funky retro-soul, it manages to keep a handmade bedroom-y vibe. Insert a goofy ‘baby-making music’ quip here if you must (and not to say that “Bright Side” isn’t also that), but I’m thinking more of the way ‘bedroom’ is used in relation to lo-fi and small-scale pop. It’s an easy thing to miss at first because of the smoky, sultry groove and Motown guitar/bass riff, but I think repeated listens reveal a dejected sense of melancholy lurking beneath the song’s first half. Levesque sings in a raspy Jim James moan, walking alone after dark and thinking about all the “happy hearts…beating back home.” The first time he sings the title sounds like a half-hearted reassurance as a string section rises up to color in the drama.
It’s sympathetic and ingratiating, but even better is how, over the course of three short minutes, “Bright Side” ends up taking its own advice. Half way through, the hi-hats switch to double time funk, the lead guitar gets all wakka-chikka-wakka-chikka, and Levesque starts cooing like he’s decided to try his hand at seduction anyway. The changes in mood come quickly now, and before you know it he’s broken into a piano-doubled jazz scat, an airy, uplifting violin line, and come back around to the chorus, switching to major-key chords and grinning “Gotta look on the bright side!” like an upbeat Cee-Lo. Throughout the whole affair, he preserves the golden warmth of old soul music while somehow dodging the bright, brassy edge that can sometimes make funk feel cheesy (maybe by using violins instead of horns?). The in-studio mumbling at the end seals the deal: taking a song that could have sounded glossy and effusive and giving it the modesty of a rough little demo. It’s the best of both worlds, no?
