Honey Brook, Pennsylvania’s About A Million – a musical project by multi-talented musician Anthony Leitch – recently released a phenomenal twelve track piece titled Hold Up. We thought it deserved to have more ears on it, and we think you’ll agree once you check it out in its entirety below.
When glancing at the song titles, one may assume that they can’t get any better than that. No punctuation or capitalized letters is kind of a pleasing esthetic if you ask us, but the songs themselves were done masterfully as well. Take “dont stare too long at the rain drops”, for example. “The sky is crying and it’s my fault/I knew I should have held on to her” is the first line, delivered with simple guitar chords and Anthony’s honest, emotional vocals before the song blossoms into a raw, multi-instrumental piece. The follow up to that track – a song titled “you are very pretty” – once again makes you feel like you’re back in puppy love, while Anthony’s raspy, light vocals make you fall into infatuation over and over again.
“dam you life” is certainly one of our favorites, if not simply for the play on words with the title. Plus we absolutely identify with it from the very first line “damn you life, you’re always putting some type of obstacle right in front of me” to the last few, poignant, words “Do I feel bad? Fuck yeah I feel bad… Cuz I could care less about me.” Another favorite is “adorable”, but not for the title this time. The way that the instrumentals flow together with the vocals sounds almost like a rushing river in the background, a song whose sound itself conjures up images of sunlight glistening off bubbling waters on a crystal clear autumn day. The album is rounded out with “we should go record in the rain”, which is another suggestion with the word “rain” in it, a song that almost mirrors the first in length (3:03 vs. 3:04), a musical in comparison to the all-too-short nature of the majority of the work.
While we’re not here to argue that Hold Up falls into the category of “happy go lucky summer anthems,” we will admit it faces the melancholy head on. Anthony is clearly writing what he knows – focusing on an endearing self-deprecation bit for a large part of it – and not putting on any bullshit facade. And it’s refreshing.
Hold Up is available now.
