And on the new track "a thousand times again," you find the New York indie rocker Danny Ritz putting out another slow-burning ode to love in a manner so firmly planted between pretty and gritty that it almost aches toward the edges. It's the kind of song that not only plays but lingers. Based on the emotional blueprint of the love too overwhelming to resist, "a thousand times again" plays like a whispered confession spoken softly in a crowded room. It captures the intimacy of a gaze that lasts too long, the ache of a connection that seems infinite and precarious.
Ritz embraces the romance of the classic crooners but doesn't allow the song to get lost in the past. On the contrary, he loads it with jangly, distorted guitars and buzzing synths, a tug-of-war between raw emotion and atmospheric dissonance. In fantasy, The result might sound like a brooding, melodic, tragic, and oddly euphoric meeting of Roy Orbison and Bon Iver. It's indie rock in indie pop's clothing, a pulse dictated by the soul-searching edge of alternative rock. Ritz has a gift for making the commonplace extraordinary sounding. He describes his work as "big songs about the little things, and sometimes vice versa," and "a thousand times again" is a prime example of that motto.
It's a love song but not a sanitized, picture-perfect seduction game. This one breathes, stumbles, and soars. It is love not as an idea but as a lived thing, full of contradictions. Ritz's delivery is quietly vulnerable, with enough grime to keep it real. Throughout, the production doesn't hold back. The soupy textures enhance the feeling, engulfing you in a sound world as emotionally raw as it is cinematic. With "a thousand times again," Danny Ritz has returned to remind us that actual, messy, all-consuming love might not always arrive on a silk bed. Occasionally, it puts on denim and echoes, bleeding through speakers with each sigh and surge. And we wouldn't have it any other way.
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