Amrita Soon

Singer-songwriter Amrita Soon is clearly a whimsical creature. One only needs to roughly comb through her blog entries to clearly see that.

She talks about experiences like being able to hear her audiences’ conversations while she’s playing or about missing her brother’s laughter because she’s been too busy. But mostly, it’s in the way she talks about music, like it’s not just a large part of her existence, but the reason for it.

This is after all a girl who at the tender age of 15, paid her way to Nashville to be a part of CMA (Country Music Association) Music Festival. You get a sense with her that music is not an option to get by, it’s the only one available.

This commitment has not always translated on her material, but it certainly does on Amrita’s new track “24 Years”, a sweet ode to her grandparents’ lasting relationship. It may be built on four straightforward chords, but it feels like it was constructed in a lifetime.

The track charms you with its simplicity. There are no angular chord changes, no tempo gymnastics. Just a four-chord song constructed around a two-note piano riff. But what makes it noteworthy is her delivery.

It’s childlike, but not childish. There were plenty of opportunities for the track to fall into the dismissively cheesy, but the innocence of her voice keeps you honed in and before long, you feel like staying until the end.

When she sings, “Darling the days are long, but years go by in a flash / So what do you say we call this love and don’t look back”, it’s not just a description of what she saw in their relationship, but also a reflection of something she herself believes in.

Truly great songwriters have the ability to peel back the curtains of their lives when they want to and offer you a vivid glimpse of what’s inside. No one is saying that Soon is there yet, but she’s got a lot of even-tarred runway in front of her to get there one day.

It’s easy to forget that she only just turned 20. It’s easy to forget that many of the world’s music makers are at an age where they should have still not much to say about life because they may not have experienced enough of it.

Soon’s allure is that she doesn’t try to put on a weather-worn coat. She’s not an old soul, and she seems perfectly comfortable about that. She is not trying to convince you she has something to say, she is just saying what she feels like saying and it’s convincing.

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Amrita Soon on Facebook, Twitter, www.

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