This time last year, we covered so strange… only tearz, a two-song release by California‘s Derek Ted we described as “strange DIY songs for strange DIY times.” Since, the prolific Ted has put out a number of singles, splits and covers, all extending and growing this aesthetic and marking the style’s distinctive intimacy and emotion that we first noted on wilted in summer back in 2016.
This month sees Derek Ted return with a brand new EP, KEEP TRYING, and the opening singles suggest it is the most developed, fully-realised release to date. With a cordial acoustic sound that rises into something more assertive, ‘w h i s p e r s’ is a deceptively powerful track that packs more into its two verse, two minute run time that you might expect.
A similar effect is conjured by ‘better than u think’, its bright and candid style underpinned by simplicity yet allowed to roam with subtle synth textures and electric guitar. The rhythms of the track are pitched between reflective and urgent, capturing both the remove of retrospection and the persistent immediacy of love now lost, occupying the strange no-man’s land between breaking up and moving on.
If you’ve always had this place in my life
where you been?
If you’ve always known it’d be like this
then why pretend
I know you better than you think
I know this dance across the water
I stood there n watched wreckage sink
I see her walking past the altarUntil night brings a haunting voice inside my mind
collapse in just to pull apart & redefine
