My Review: Amy MacDonald - Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For?

 

Amy MacDonald - Is This What You've Been Waiting For?

The light of need illuminates steps, ideas, makes one aware of the path of one's existence, to channel synergies and new dreams. To do all this requires the power of introspection, of sincerity, of a form that engulfs the intention and makes the soul free of pain.

The Glasgow singer-songwriter returns with a track that offers juicy stylistic novelties, presenting us with what the Old Scribe has just written in the introduction, augmenting everything with sonic mixtures that allow her effervescent pop attitude to determine a whole that sticks first in the mind and then in the heart: there is her whole career in it, the need of a woman capable of walking, travelling and experimenting alone, but without forgetting sharing, loving and/or friendly as it may be, for a desired balance that can give her light.

We dance, with a beginning that contemplates both a dark techno roar and the lightness of a pop feather (reminding us in the singing of early Lene Marlin) to further colour the words, on that voice that is always the beating of wings of a butterfly that takes flight from the Clyde River. The guitars are gentle scratches, the minimalist orchestration grants harmonic soars and the counterpoint is a vocal that opens the pores. 

A song that anaesthetises difficulties by showing the identity card of an artist in continuous transit, capable of finding the ink that determines the quality of her existence. It poses questions (right from the title), describes time with a suitcase and large spaces, and then condenses everything with the thoughtfulness of giving the senses a dominant role.

It is a song in which what wins are genuine skills such as honesty, purity and the determination to leave in the magic circle of existence a sound parchment on which nothing is held back.

Although the song is fast-paced, Amy manages to sneak in the skilful ability to slow the pace, allowing the lyrics and her voice to widen the levees and send the bricks of chill up to the sky. 

The production makes the effervescent dynamic complete, and the result is a spring torch that manages to kiss the sun's rays from an almost sombre gaze.

And when a story told also becomes a warning for its surroundings, then the operation cannot but be perfectly successful, contemplating the beauty of artistic expression and the desire for personal balance, in which the wake-up call is both a concern and an awakening of necessary qualities. Much more than a beautiful song, as it also tends to suggest a different mode of consumption.

Dear Amy: we need your talent and the work of you and your band, who here, once again, prove to be splendid guardian angels...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

30 April 2025

https://open.spotify.com/intl-it/album/7D76N6Tx5MdC6h5itARNT0?si=ysiY-XB6TD2h41-h61sk6Q

https://youtu.be/zDFdgAy0IL4?si=cUFQBG5c-cbuewQl