The guitarist is using an EBow. It's a battery powered object that vibrates a string when held over it. Using an EBow creates sustained, almost synth-like, notes with little to no attack.
I really have no clue about music theory, but I watched a video a couple of weeks ago on David Bennett's channel where he explains how most of modern pop music is in 4/4 time signature, but this song by Willow is one of the few that is in 7/4. Or more precisely, the verse is in 7/4 and then it switches to 4/4 for the chorus.
I think the recording version is a lot more dynamic in the drums section than this performance. The drums are played by a different person I believe, (I could be wrong about this) but it definitely is a lot more intense. Please please do a review of that version
Amazing song! The use of the seven-pulse in an unusual way is so good. And I'm happy to see the E-bow in a pop context rather than the usual post-rock/more texture-based alt rock that usually utilizes it. The whole band is tight and Willow's vocals are just lovely but with enough gravitas and grit. This was definitely the most interesting song of the bunch for me, mostly because of how odd it is for its genre. Great insight as always, Bryan!
I think I'll have to listen to the song 3 or 4 other times before your analysis to metabolize it... First time I was almost totally driven away by the vocals 😍 Very nice song
I love this performance. Every single one of the performers are just knocking it out of the park and playing off one another beautifully. And so many tasty elements to the whole song that I don't normally see in pop music, with the standout for me being that bass line, especially the chords it plays during the chorus. For any bass lovers out there, I think the channel juliaplaysgroove's bass cover/interpretation of this song is fantastic I'm curious: you felt the song as 4/4 polyrhythm, I've seen other analyses calling this 7/4 in the verses and 4/4 in the choruses. Do both interpretations work depending on how you feel it?
Nope, I was wrong. It's definitely 7/4. But the vocal line doesn't always begin a new phrase on 1 so I thought I heard varying time feels -- 7, 8, and 9 -- and given how prevalent 4/4 is in pop-adjacent music and how a bar of each of those adds up to something divisible by 4 I went with my gut. But knowing it's in 7 it's easy to count it out despite the odd phrasing and that lines up perfectly.
I think I heard that "Symptom of Life" is a response to the adage "life is suffering." She says that, sure, maybe life contains inevitable suffering. But it also contains inevitable beauty, and you can choose to focus on that instead.
