Jack Penate “No One Lied”
Three years after proving he was more than just a “male Kate Nash” with his sonically ambitious, world-pop genre-hop fest sophomore set Everything Is New (which featured the still great ’09 highlights “Tonight’s Today” and “Pull My Heart Away”), Jack Peñate creeps back from the edge of memory with new single/ video “No One Lied”, a beautifully understated, reverb-drenched ballad that finds the London-born singer-songwriter still spending his days ruminating over the “big” things.
“Heaven is a place/ No one lied/ It’s rushing through your veins/ Flooding your eyes/ It’s hidden in your brain/ The sweetest surprise,” he sings/ alerts between the stark accompaniment of somber electric guitar lines, that teasing smidgen of blue-eyed soul grain in his voice still detectable with the occasional mini-vocal run and some gorgeously lingering falsetto “ooh”‘s.
Might “Lied”, a stunning exercise of the type of universally beloved pop-craft that award show committees go nuts for, mark the beginnings of a new Peñate makeover with him completely leaving the beguiling Afro-beat, Tropicalia and subtle hip hop textures of Everything behind?
We kinda hope not, though we just as well wouldn’t be mad if his forthcoming album included more timeless-leaning nuggets of stripped-back intimacy such as this either.
