WHYJOHNNY
WHY JOHNNY? It’s a valid question.
WHYJOHNNY is a singer-songwriter and a native New Yorker. Born in 2001, his influences are rooted in the nineties, as viewed through a 21st-century, post-genre, sonic lens. His muses here are as varied as they are nuanced. Yet the result - a suite of demos - sounds distinctly new.
The writing is marked by a sense of craft, as well as a dramatic tension; between the music and the words, but also the artist’s internal conflicts, the spark which fuels the music.
The songs, while rooted in the craft of the past, have the textures of something distinctly modern. From “Bottom of the Ocean,” with its subterranean dreaminess, to “A Face Like a Ghost,” building hypnotically from an organic opening to a richly textured crescendo.
“Up To The Light,” too, evolves from natural and ethereal into a more electronic finale. Lyrically, there’s the push and pull of concealment and exposure, between masks and self-scrutiny.
Optimistic melodies are paired with sharp lyrics, as brutal as they are honest. Though primarily a guitarist, drums were WHYJOHNNY’s first instrument, and these songs have a rhythmic momentum, a cohesiveness that packs a punch.
The demos of a young artist are the essence of the new. The sense of discovery, of losing oneself to find oneself - for the listener, and for the artist, too. WHYJOHNNY? Why not Johnny, that’s the real question.
WHYJOHNNY can be heard performing live in New York at The Standard East Village, The Bitter End, The Cutting Room, The Shrine, and Arlene’s Grocery. Currently a student at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, he is recording his first EP.
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