Listen: Cape Lion – “Called You Mine” [Premiere]

There’s really two highly effective ways to express the regret, loneliness, and wistful reminiscence when faced with the memory of the one that got away. One is slow, spare, (probably) acoustic bloodletting, letting your unadorned voice convey all the hurt and anguish. But, come on, that’s no fun…the other is to take those emotions, gorge them with sugar, pump them full of helium, and have them rush out of you.

Stockholm’s Cape Lion – Carl-Johan Sevedag and Martin Wiklund – euphorically trades in the latter. The duo stuffs their latest single, the towering “Called You Mine”, full of throbbing bass and thunderous toms, cozy swells and glistening swirls of synths, and reverb-glazed multi-tracked vocals. That’s a lot of adjectives, sure, but this tune is so full of…sound, it’s an understatement; in fact, Cape Lion inflates it so full, it nearly bursts….

You know, though, that’s the deceptive thing about how this song handles these feelings, blissfully concealing them to the point your head wants to explode. When you’re smarting from heartbreak and you’re through gobbling up the rush of night, you return home, alone, and that door shuts behind you, you will burst, and it’ll be beautiful.