Little Hurt Releases “My Head Hurts” (SINGLE)

There’s a lot of life in the modern pop-rock landscape. Little Hurt is the brainchild of onetime Mowgil’s front man and songwriter Colin Dieden and synthesizing the aforementioned musical styles with a contrast of boisterous musical energy and despairing words. Dieden understands the dynamics driving a song’s drama can manifest themselves in multiple ways. He, likewise, understands the value strong visual accompaniment can bring to a track. Despite the abundance of music videos still appearing, achieving an ideal balance between the musical and visual is an elusive lost art for many. Little Hurt is not among them. I am satisfied with the way the lyric video maintains the song’s tempo while still highlighting Dieden’s words.

SMART URL: https://orcd.co/myheadhurts.

As I mentioned earlier, the dour outlook of the lyric strikes a very different note than the musical arrangement. The speaker in the song feels set upon on every side and doesn’t see any relief forthcoming. It’s a portrait of someone near the end of their rope. You can hear the zest in Dieden’s voice a couple of different ways. The first, as we’ve covered, is he’s trying to create a memorable juxtaposition of delivery and message. The second way is Dieden attempting to further dramatize the song’s emotional terrain; there’s hints of near hysteria in the vocal manner Dieden takes on.

The chorus packs one hell of a wallop. He sings with wide-open passion, throwing every bit of his vocal muscle into the declarative lyrics, and it gives the track a climatic payoff that listeners remember. It puts the track’s overall language in sharp relief. Dieden serves himself well paring the song’s individual lines down to the bone – there’s not a syllable of excess language present in the cut. He is certain how he feels and how to express it, if nothing else.

There’s a rough-hewn quality I like in his voice. He sings with unabashed enthusiasm and, acknowledging this is a studio recording, Dieden nevertheless has an elastic voice he never pushes beyond its limits. The commitment behind each word is without question. Little Hurt’s latest single is a musical work that holds up under repeated listens. Anyone creating music that isn’t disposable is well worth noting in our modern era.

It is fair to expect Little Hurt will continue building their critical and popular reputation. Dieden’s songwriting imagination doesn’t betray any hints of exhaustion and his skill depicting timeless human emotions and foibiles with lean, economical language grows with each new release. “My Head Hurts” is so unvarnished it is practically primal yet there’s a lot of stylishness driving this piece as well. It’s a song that identifiably Dieden’s – no one else I know approaches their performances in the same way.

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/littlehurtofficial/?hl=en

I’m eager to hear his future efforts in a way I rarely am for modern artists. There’s a sense of emotional daring underlying this recording. You get the sense there’s nowhere Dieden won’t go. The remaining question is if music listeners will follow his muse wherever it leads Little Hurt in the future.

Mark Druery