On “WEREWOLF,” Aime Simone and Peter Doherty join forces for a thrilling, ghostly duet that’s more of a secret exchanged in the dark than a song. It begins with Doherty’s spoken-word prelude, evocative and fragile, delicate, timbered, and disarming all at the same time, as if he’s drawing back a curtain to reveal a world hovering in that narrow space between openness and menace. From there, the music spills over into a touching, soulful confessional, the sort of song that lodges under your skin long after its final note has drifted away.
A brooding, enveloping bassline forms the backbone of the song, throbbing underneath ghostly textures and fog-like echoes. It’s restrained but striking, advancing with the soft menace of a quiet heartbeat in an empty room. The melancholy feels physical, the way autumn air cools the night’s lengthening embrace and shades edge toward one another more closely. It’s a song fit for the season’s descent, intimate, eerie, and spellbinding.
“WEREWOLF” comes from a 10-year creative relationship. Eighteen-year-old Aime Simone attended a Doherty concert in September 2012 and was impressed by his poetic freedom and emotional honesty. It was the beginning of a relationship that formed around common sensibility and instinct. A decade-plus later, this team-up from these two, one angelic-voiced and the other very humanly coarse, feels like fate accomplished, a plain old confession in two voices, and one so unfussy with its emotions.
Together, Simone and Doherty erase the line between tenderness and threat to shape something profoundly human and thrilling. “WEREWOLF” doesn’t howl, it whispers, quivers, and ultimately bewitches. It’s a song for anyone who has felt the tug of darkness and the fragile hope concealed within it.
What a stunning description of yet another wonderful song from my absolute favourite artist Aime Simone!!
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