“Life’s a Lion’s Den”
Through the Eyes of Isaia Huron
“I want this to be like a lost art piece. That’s the ultimate goal.”
The one thing Isaia Huron stands by is his intuition. His headstrong confidence in the decisions he makes in his life, which, ultimately, translates into the confidence he has in his career as a musician. As a lone-wolf in an industry of competing predators, Isaia Huron knows never to settle along the process of making what he knows he wants to hear. As he makes his way through the music industry, Huron takes the trying experiences of young-adulthood and twists them into a melodic expression of honesty. LEOLEOLEO is Isaia Huron’s newest work, an unfiltered wave of feelings sprouted from a place of anger, fear, and yearning. With his signature layering of vocals to produce enticing melodies, LEOLEOLEO is yet another emotional ride that we join Isaia for, with his voice guiding the instability of love that he is tracking.
LEOLEOLEO encompasses, not a train of thought, but a train of feelings from the deep and dark corners of Isaia Huron. Much like his Soundcloud drop, NoThoughtsAllFeels_One, this new single can be seen as the part two, according to Huron, in how he lets his emotions dictate the art that comes out of them. Through the countless nuances to his own relationship in the song, Huron emphasizes a vulnerable fear of loneliness: “I still might end up alone… you still left me lonely.” When it comes to refurbishing the feelings of anger, yearning, love and lust, Isaia Huron is an expert. Not only at communicating those feelings, but mimicking their rise and fall with the flow of his music. LEOLEOLEO is just as much a dramatic performance as it is what Isaia had to go through to create it.
Accompanying the heart-strain Isaia experiences are the levels of references and inspirations used to communicate his raw emotions. The 2017 film, Phantom Thread, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, makes the biggest imprint on this track. Isaia shared that the relationship he is dissecting in LEOLEOLEO very closely mirrors the dramatic and unpredictable relationship between the main characters of Anderson’s film. About two minutes into his song, Isaia transitions into a delicate piano ballad, one that was taken from the Phantom Thread score, done by Radiohead guitarist/pianist Jonny Greenwood. As a Radiohead-aficianado himself, Isaia Huron was brilliantly meticulous with how he curated the composition of this story.
Taking a drum sample and the bass performed by a piano player at his church, Isaia was able to lay out a fitting crescendo towards the transition to House of Woodcock by Jonny Greenwood with what artistically influenced him most. The lullaby of melodies that Isaia returns with alongside the score piece encapsulates the forthcoming loneliness he is to be facing. “I want to be looked at as a composer,” shares Huron, hoping that this track will reach all the people it needs to, and might even be taken down one day, so long as Greenwood or Anderson hear it, “If I can do this, imagine how much more I could do…”
An expressionist, an artist, and a composer, Isaia Huron embodies the lover’s experience. How getting wrapped up in the feeling of love enthralls you in a cloud of instability and confusion that can be as beautiful as it is tragic. LEOLEOLEO takes us into the lion’s den, facing the iminent fight with the brutality of connection and disconnection, and how something can be so soft, yet so painful. Isaia Huron leans on his art to pull him through, “I could succumb to compromise and sign my name on a dotted line and switch up what I prioritize, I still might end up lonely…” giving us all the more reason to head into the lion’s den with him.
LEOLEOLEO is now available on Soundcloud.
Written by Amy Moore