Neil Haverty’s signature power and memories come through on his new single, “What I Don’t Need,” which is a bit calmer than usual, following the release of his radical EP last year. Best known as the leader of alt-folk collective Bruce Peninsula and for his evocative scoring on the Wildhood soundtrack, Haverty ventures into a more intimate, interior landscape, one defined by the push-and-pull between needing space and being needed, between self-protection and the tug of connection.
The song, produced by Haverty’s longtime collaborator Leon Taheny (Owen Pallett, Weaves), unfolds with a hushed urgency. And its opening verses seem to take a moment alone in a dim room, let’s say, pensive and nearly weightless, driven by Haverty’s muted delivery. But the song can’t sit still for long. Dark, shadowy synths creep in along the edges, suggestive of emotional weight beneath the placid surface. And then the chorus comes in, and everything opens up.
Where the verses mutter, the chorus explodes, a release outburst of power drums and serrated guitar lines that mirror Haverty’s struggle with the tension between introversion and expression, with reticence when action is called for and reflection when response is urgent. It’s a push and pull that’s deeply resonant because, especially at a moment when solitude and responsibility crash into each other, it feels profoundly human.
“What I Don’t Need” nails that internal bargaining in stunning detail. Haverty doesn’t wedge independence and interdependence so much as let them shift into and away from each other, collide, and mold one another. The slow-build tension and emotional volatility of the production leave the track with a pulse, given its sense of being lived-in rather than staged.