Xoller - 'Warning Shot'
Photo credit: Zach Wright
Los Angeles dream pop artist Xoller fires a ‘Warning Shot’ flagging addictive love in her tenderly crafted new single.
’Warning Shot’ opens sparsely seeing sombre piano keys support Xoller’s effortlessly likeable vocal. Soon enough atmospheric claps of percussion and dramatic booms of synth accompany the soundscape, before it fills out with more melodic and romanticised layers. But despite the more textured and pulsating layers of the track, ‘Warning Shot’ feels spacious and retains its intimacy and evocation.
Xoller’s vocal and lyrics exude a melancholia that is deeply moving and vulnerable and at times has a familiarity about it that reminded me of Lana Del Ray at her most brooding. But the song isn’t all dark, the track melodically moves with an airy and buoyant fluidity, which means it encapsulates an elemental feeling that connects organically with the heart and the mind.
Xoller describes the song as being about “the love we feel when we’re hopelessly addicted to something” and looks at getting caught in a cycle of addiction and never learning the lesson, telling ourselves, “don't fall into that pool, you know you'll drown again, you drown every time. But if drowning is all you know, what do you do once you dry yourself off?. Xoller continues, “we think we’re strong enough to ride the wave and come out alive on the other side. But there's always a moment when a warning shot fires off; we do something crazy and someone who loves us says, “you better get that shit under control,” and we just shrug it off. Then that same shit hits the fan and those friends who warned us scatter”.
‘Warning Shot’ emotively lodges itself into its listener neck like a lump in the throat. A beautiful, aching and honest insight into what to expect from Xoller’s debut EP “Diamond In My Head,” due to drop this Spring.
Words of Karla Harris