Charlie Lenehan Debuts with Sleek R&B Groover “Waistline”
Like a vintage Vespa weaving through Shoreditch after midnight, Charlie Lenehan’s debut solo ignition, “Waistline,” flashes chrome under neon confessions. The erstwhile Bars and Melody front-runner steps from boy-band scaffolding into a sinuous R&B lane where sub-bass hums like fiber-optic streetlights and rim-shots tick with feline confidence. His tenor—closer to early-millennium Timberlake than to any contemporary crooner—glides over a staccato guitar lick that flickers, vanishes, then re-emerges as percussive chiaroscuro. The beat wears its groove like a bespoke Savile Row jacket: relaxed shoulders, razor-sharp waist, pockets lined with sly syncopations begging for twilight car stereos.
Sonically, producer alchemy keeps the track buoyant; reverse cymbal swells and vaporous pads lend oxygen, preventing the hook from collapsing under its own hedonism. Yet structural opulence masks a lyrical economy bordering on austerity. “Say you’ll stay the same to me” cycles so relentlessly it risks hypnotic fatigue, a mantra that commands hips but denies the intellect fresh territory. One pines for a mid-eight bar where narrative nuance—perhaps a falsetto countermelody or a dissonant harmonic pivot—might puncture the sleek surface.
Still, “Waistline” succeeds as kinetic hedonism. It coils around the listener’s spinal cord, lowering shoulders, loosening vertebrae, coaxing a slow-burn shimmy even from stoic commuters. Whether that shimmy survives after the fade-out will depend on the listener’s appetite for repetition versus revelation. Either way, Charlie Lenehan’s independent renaissance has announced itself with polished swagger and just enough ember to promise larger flames ahead. For now, the Vespa idles, headlights glowing on tomorrow’s uncharted asphalt.
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Rustling reeds beside a North Sea dyke mutter that every departure is tidal, receding yet never quite forgetting the shore—so unfurls néomí’s elegiac single “It’s Never Easy (Leaving Someone Behind).”