Kevin Driscoll’s debut single, “Black It Out,” doesn’t so much introduce a new artist as it kicks open the door to a room mid-deconstruction. You’re immediately in the thick of it, dust in the air, surrounded by the emotional wreckage of something that was clearly, once, a home.
That promised “catchy rhythmic guitar” has a beautifully troubled energy. It’s not a hook that invites you to a party; it’s the agitated rhythm of pacing a bare wooden floor, of a thumb rubbing a worry stone until it’s smooth. There’s a real, soulful ache in the bluesy melody, a sound that understands the weight of what’s gone unsaid. It reminds me, strangely, of the specific, heavy silence in a house after the power goes out—you suddenly notice every creak, every sigh of the foundation. The song exists in that sudden, stark quiet.
And Driscoll’s voice fills that space with a jagged honesty. It’s hard to ignore because it has no interest in being smoothed over or pleasant. It has the texture of a sleepless night, of a confession mumbled into a glass. When he sings of wanting to numb the finality of it all, it isn’t a poetic gesture. It feels blunt and primal, the desperate logic of someone who would rather feel nothing than the sharp, specific agony of this one thing. He sings about realized fears, and you get the sense he’s staring them right in the face as the notes leave his throat.
He’s wrestling with the impulse to completely erase a person, a history, a feeling. But in crafting this haunting track, he’s chiseled it all into stone. Does setting your regret to music ever really black it out?
