Synth Single Review: “Spencer Street’’ by Heartbreak City

Heartbreak City’s Spencer Street brims over with memories of shared love. The song starts with a broadly shining synth and chimes locking into an affectionately touching melody as the drums guide the music. Jon Lilygreen’s voice brushes like a summer wind as the piano contributes warmth and tenderness, full of emotional depth.

The piano glows like an ember as the vocals carry the chorus with happy relaxation, while the rhythm throbs. Chimes sparkle with delight and Jon Lilygreen gives a richly textured performance, drawing me into the song.

As the music radiates deep caring, Aled Rhys Evans’ synth cascades, filling the track with breezy dynamism. The notes pour out in a luminous wash of wistful memory while the underpinnings add weight. Toby Davy’s production fills every note with youthful excitement and reminiscence. An electric piano rings with a lush sound, and Jon Lilygreen’s voice drifts into silence.

The song’s subject said they wanted to see the storyteller, so he let them take their shot. He smokes “a nervous cigarette, walking in the rain to the house where I met you.” Now he’s “kissing goodbye to sober, dancing with bottles of cheap red wine.” He remembers the way the other person would laugh when he told them what they already knew. He asks, “How can I make you mine?”

“Take me back to where we would meet and play that song where I sweep you off your feet,” is what the storyteller wants from the subject. He isn’t going to forget all of his feelings and all the time that they “spent making love until you’d let me leave the house on Spencer Street.” He’d wake up feeling like he had a hangover, while the other person was just “a ray of sweet sunshine,” resting their head on his shoulder and holding his hand.

Now the narrator doesn’t want to “mess this up and I don’t want to say too much,” but he realizes he’d be foolish to throw the relationship away. He adds, “You’re my ride, you’re my die and I’ll always feel this way.” He isn’t going to forget everything he felt or “all the time that we spent making all of those precious memories.” As his heart raced, he was still on the other person’s doorstep, while they kissed him and they danced “in the kitchen till we fell asleep in the house on Spencer Street.”