Vincent Covello “Torchlights” (LP)

Vincent Covello’s new album, Torchlights, dropped on Friday, August 2. Unapologetically independent in terms of its understated campaign, and widespread, digital release, Covello’s album is an alternative to the mainstream music releases. Increasingly, established mediums in various fields of entertainment – particularly film, television, and music – are facing something of a reckoning, and a consequential, unstoppable game change. If the strikes in film world are any indicator, or campaigns by artists like Taylor Swift to benefit from streaming versions of their work, the web has essentially crushed the exclusive vice entertainment behemoths and juggernauts have had on commercial monopolization.

WEBSITE: https://vincentcovellomusic.com/

Platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, and personalized website builders have changed the game – Covello navigating this gulf with considerable skill. This is because he is both of the establishment, and a prime utilizer of what’s unfurling on the ground. With ties to Warner Bros. Records, and a key instigator of BT’s hit single Loving You More, he’s been in the music industry for more than nineteen years. Yet in realizing his own with Torchlights, it feels as if Covello is sort of going back to basics, freeing himself from the shackles of any corporate titan or mid-level manager and working with people who genuinely appreciate creative expression.

“Currently, Vincent has returned to his artistic singer-songwriter roots with an adult contemporary, light jazz album titled Torchlights. After losing his parents and brother in 2020, he created this album in their honor. With Universal Music Group producer/artist Don Miggs, the Jim Riley band, orchestrator Andrew Joslyn, saxophonist Michael Lington, and writer Victor Migenes, an epic force was created with Vincent’s original standards, taking you on a journey of life, love, and loss in an emotional triumph of music through his voice and songs,” he proclaims via his personal website, Vincent Covello Music.

Torchlights truly reflects these sentiments, and lives up to the clear intentions Mr. Covello, Mr. Miggs, and their creative collaborators decided upon. As its euphemistic title would suggest, Torchlights explores some of the darker and more rich aspects of the adult versions of love, heartbreak, and relationships. Covello’s voice isn’t perfect, it isn’t entirely refined, but it’s completely evocative and immersive – coupled with dynamite, fire lyrics to boot. Unlike a lot of singers today, stuck on catchy hooks and the peripherals of ideas, Covello tells a story in each of his tracks. Cry’n Eyes, Time Plays Us All, Blow Your Mind, and The Next Life are examples of real writing, episodic in nature, and displaying a surprising versatility in expression while still being thematically linked under the overall focus of the album.

It really does feel like a coming home, in a sense, even though I don’t know Mr. Covello as a creative collaborator personally. You get the sense Mr. Covello genuinely feels free with the people he’s working with. He’s been in a position to understand what it is to work under the albatross of corporate oversight, and perhaps that contributes to the passion project earnestness with which Torchlights is imbued.

All I can say to that is, well played sir. Your efforts have paid off.

Mark Druery