Single Review: Time Will Tell

Originally from Hawke’s Bay, singer-songwriter and composer Grace Duncan will be releasing her new single Time Will Tell on February 28th.

Grace is exploring her musical identity through the likes of her alluring vocals and choice of calming, natural harmonies and melodies. In her first single Come, We Must Go she illustrated her experience with traditional Maori instruments; taonga puoro. In this single, she extends her exploration of mother nature to that of time. Her sound is meditative and gives power to her wanderings through Aotearoa’s history.

The song has a vocal folky open with beautifully well-held notes, giving way to the contemplative lyrics of how “time eludes us”. The song is clean and well recorded. Each mixed layer of string instruments gives way to sounds characterising simplicity and solitude. Though poetically a song about time; it sketches ideas of the gloom of consumption and haste our modern world creates. The pitch draws you in and is accompanied by many interesting splashes of sound; the quiet rumble of the bass drum, brush strokes, spacey acoustic guitar and numbers of other soft instrumentations. Grace’s choice of layers are pacifying and give the listener room for thought.

This single helps bring back serenity amongst the many stimuli that crowd our minds from what is important to remember and continue to learn, such as our country’s past and present. The song builds, ascends and picks up small speed about two thirds in, then drops and leaves us with an image of being held onto. It’s definitely one to add to the pensive playlist.