Crossover Crooner Cody Jasper Drops New Single-Video

Big guitars have been on a major comeback in the last couple of years, and nowhere is this more evident than in the new single “Who You Are” from crossover crooner Cody Jasper. Where a lot of Jasper’s peers have been settling for a more straightforward delivery style, this is a singer/songwriter who wants to get elaborate in his latest release, and to some extent the guitar-powered grooves in “Who You Are” are the perfect vehicle through which to give us a more complicated performance than the status quo allows for. With this single, we’re getting as much oomph as we are aesthetical sophistication, which isn’t true of any other country/rock crossover tracks I’ve had the pleasure of sitting down with lately.

URL: https://codyjasper.com/

Jasper isn’t just relying on the percussion to frame his statements but instead launching his lead vocal from the thrust of the drums. He’s bouncing off of this beat with less panache in the chorus, but his soul is still very much tied to the reticent swing of the percussion, especially when we get into the refrain in the second half of the song. I wouldn’t have put as much spotlight on the bassline as it’s getting this mix, but I can understand why the bottom is a little heavier than necessary in “Who You Are;” if it’s dancing that this singer/songwriter wants to encourage beside this reflective rhythm, he had to shift the weight towards the backend of the track as opposed to the front.

There’s a little more midrange on the vocal element here than what I would normally go for, but I also think that it’s because of this unique approach to EQ that Jasper is going to get a little more love from the critics than some of his contemporaries will. In the American underground, physicality (even in minimalist works in Americana) has replaced the efficiency of the old school, but this trend isn’t stopping our singer from giving us something cut and dry when and where we need it in this song. He’s deliberate and uninterested in the glow of an oversized piece of music, which is a far cry from the shape of things as his peers have been producing them in the last few years.

Cody Jasper has been releasing some fun material for a while now, but I think he’s making a tremendous leap forward with “Who You Are” and earning a lot more respect from the critics he’s spent so much time trying to appeal to. He’s got a very intelligent presentation to be shared in this track and its accompanying music video, and though I think there’s even more that can be done with the sound he’s working with at the moment, he’s in the right place artistically speaking in this song. “Who You Are” has the bellowing melodic depth of something much more progressive than it is, and with Jasper’s pipes leading the lyrics, I don’t know that there’s a single moment of the track in which we aren’t put right in the middle of poetic, sterling rock n’ roll action.

Samuel Pratt