You don’t need loads of creative contrast to create provocative harmonies in rock n’ roll anymore, and if there’s an American who can illustrate this rather flawlessly this season, it’s none other than greenhorn recording artist Kristen Capolino. Capolino’s new Independence Day single, titled “Freedom,” is one of the most straightforward progressive pop songs I’ve heard from an up-and-coming player in the genre lately, but for all that, it’s missing in grandiosity, it makes up for in performer-sourced tenacity. Some artists might need elaborate arrangements in 2023, but this young woman is not one of them.
Rhythm is Capolino’s best friend in “Freedom,” but rather than using it just as a catalyst for expressing heavier emotion in the song as some of her peers might have, she’s incorporating it into the very bones of the narrative from the jump. This groove is acting like a second singer in the mix, utilizing physicality to harmonize with the verses in a manner that no melodic instrumentation could have authentically. Synthetics would have been pointless in this track – there’s just too much organic guitar luster to fit in anything outside of what our singer is naturally working with.
Kristen Capolino never sounds intimidated by the melodic ascent she comes up to in the chorus of “Freedom;” actually, she seems so swaggering in her management of the release that one could argue she should have let the tension build behind her just a little more than she inevitably did. It’s a pointed move that doesn’t sully the overall punch of the material, and she might even want to consider exploiting the moodiness of the music in her future works, all of which I’m planning on keeping a close eye out for now that I’ve become aware of her abilities. The tone here is everything, and she’s getting a lot out of it for the context of the lyrics.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Capolino doing well with this sound in an intimate live setting, which isn’t to say she couldn’t cultivate a stadium-rocking presence as well. There’s just something about her persona that screams old-fashioned nightclub singer to me; her delicate approach, her firm but fluid poetic emissions, and even the way she unites harmony inside of a pressurized groove. She isn’t someone who becomes shy in the spotlight, but rather blossoms in it, evolving into the sort of bright beacon that makes visiting the smallest of clubs all the more exciting.
Seasonal and so-called “themed” efforts are never easy – if they were, there would be even more one-hit-wonders than there are now – but you’d never guess as much just from the way Kristen Capolino owns the studio in the all-American “Freedom.” She’s found her calling, and although I think a full-length studio album will be more revealing of her value as a long-term player in the modern pop movement, what she has already produced for us in this first release has earned her a spot on my radar – and that of other critics as well – ahead of many other singers and songwriters making waves this year.
Chadwick Easton