Jodi Heights – The Storm (2022)
Jodi Heights seems to have mastered the art of reaching out to listeners with an intimate intensity which she put to great use in ‘White Knight’ and ‘The Iceberg’. She is now turning that intimacy to the hopeful yet undeniably intense ballad ‘The Storm’. Rolling with the dark clouds of crisis, she explores the two most common mindsets we all find ourselves in at these times, community building and self-serving.
Pitting selfishness against empathy, she laces the single with the hope that the latter will win while asking what we will have left once the storm of the crisis has passed. While the single was written in the early days of the pandemic, the depths of the message transcends this single moment and crosses into all crises we face as a group. As she considers the mindsets of people, she also offers a reminder that when the storm strikes, we have a choice in how we react.
The delicate piano line that opens ‘The Storm’ carries the scent of rain and the feeling of an oncoming storm. The music adds a heaviness to the air like the building of a thunderstorm that is just waiting to break. It is a beautifully intimate sound yet expansive as it reaches out toward the rolling dark clouds. The acoustic melodics are packed with the stunning simplicity of Heights’ sound that reaches up into rather epic territory. The piano-driven melody wraps around you while bringing the gentle patter of rain against your skin. Intimate tones settle over your soul, but there is something woven into the melodic flow that tugs at your emotion. You are caught in the feeling of hope that could be dashed at any moment.
The intense intimacy of the melody is tempered with Heights’ vocals as they bring the bright threads of hope. As the melody rains down on you and builds the storm, her vocals are like the chill in the air that heightens your senses. There is an amazing beauty to her voice that captivates you from the first word. She tugs at the building of the melody to paint the picture of the storm using it as a metaphor for the crisis we all face. The chorus soars with the hope that empathy will win only to turn to the understanding that self-serving desires hamper this hope. It is a wonderfully touching track that leaves you with a lot to think about regarding how we approach problems and the potential we all have to make things better.
As the melody of ‘The Storm’ patters down like rain around you, Jodi Heights explores the response we have to crises using beautiful metaphors and an incredibly touching performance. Both the melody and her vocals sweep through the air like the building of a storm carrying the heaviness of rain and a chill to the air. The lyrics explore the metaphor of the track tinged with the hope that empathy and community spirit will win against self-servicing desires.
Find out more about Jodi Heights on her website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
