Album Review: Eddie Deets: Radio On

Up-and-coming artist Eddie Deets unveils an impressive and emotionally sincere debut album, Radio On.

There are certain artists whose visceral, emotional pulse with their music feels like a cyber heart. One that has a machine’s pulse and a human’s rhythm, where love meets lightning within the peaks and valleys of every stadium-ready pop-imbued thump that courses through its veins. Eddie Deets has always carried this very rawness in his voice and songwriting, but on his latest offering, Radio On, Deets uses it as the album's building blocks, reinventing and sharpening it into something more personal from a young artist who has finally taken the architecture of his sound and found a frequency that feels like home.

From the beginning of Radio On, the opening moments “Black Hole,” “Wide Awake,” and “Nothing Left" clearly show a distinct change in emotional prevalence as Deets is allowing this story to unfold track for track. While "Radio On” gives listeners a more instrumentally 80s-tinged bounciness, “Black Hole” and “Wike Awake” lend themselves to a more emotional, volatile state, with their deep reverb and melancholic synths guiding the way down a soundwave of crystalized sadness wrapped in tender and exposed lyrics that feel like late-night texts one regrets and early-morning truths that surface and are unavoidable in their wake.

However, the emotional vibes heighten a bit with the alt-rock grit and pop-leaning sensibilities in “Nothing Left" to the neon-sign-glowing on rain-slicked city-street vibes of "WTFYA." This isn’t to say it's going for sunshine and rainbows here, but underneath the glow of its sugary-sweet pop dressings, there still lies a sense of darkness within its instrumental motion. It’s not frantic, though. It feels contemplative, like someone is driving at 2 a.m., the headlights carving through a path of tenebrous uncertainty, hoping the road opens up for some kind of emotional release or clarity.

Something Deets does well is maintaining a balance between the emotional and electronic elements; these transitions work well in tracks like "Closer," “Red Flag,” and the dramatic numbers “Toxic” and “Burn Up.” Pushing deeper into emotional textures, his vocals are earnest and unvarnished, sitting on the edge of breaking, with the simplest phrases even carrying a sense of internalized weight that refuses to fully open up. The production on this is imperfect, but it feels intentional and helps to push this narrative of someone on the brink of emotional collapse. Guitars buzz like frayed nerves; drums hit like uncomfortable heartbeats, trying to steady themselves after the sudden rush of misery swoops in, while synths flicker in the distance, as they're the only sign of hope. From start to finish, Radio On feels deeply cinematic, where you don’t just feel the sadness; you can see it.

Radio On is a great introduction to the world that Deets is trying to build here. A realm of well-written emotional contradictions, Deets flows from a fear of getting too close; a desire for change, yet a clinging to what feels comfortable; and a desire to be seen but a terror of what comes with that. Radio On comes from a place of someone who has survived emotional whiplash and has built up the strength to talk about it. It’s this unique take on vulnerability that will certainly take this artist far, and if this is just an appetizer, the full course that follows will not disappoint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=OLAK5uy_mB_RhOtzGCRArbMrWn-45FJtGykkob1Uk&v=4OYqm9rTTvc