There’s a peculiar honesty to fencah’s new single, “One Last Time,” an honesty that begins with the sound of his silky strings. This isn’t the sprightly instrument of beach bonfires; it sounds like wood that has held a history in its grain, its warmth underpinning a profound and complicated ache. It’s the kind of instrument you’d expect to find in a forgotten corner of an attic, waiting for the right story to tell.
This song is that story. It’s a one-sided conversation aimed at the space left behind by a loved one, a gentle interrogation of the afterlife. Max Zauner, as fencah, holds a receiver up to the void, asking questions of his late grandmother that dementia clouded in her final years.
The track’s architecture feels deliberately fragile, with Gabriel Denk’s guitar and Michael Stöger’s bass providing a steady, supportive floor. But it’s Jon Graboff’s visiting pedal steel that truly defines the emotional landscape. It isn’t just decoration; it’s the sound of the question itself, a long, searching sigh that hangs over the gentle synths, stretching across an impossible distance.
Listening is like opening an old, dense book on botany and finding a single, perfectly preserved pansy tucked inside—an unexpected, heartbreaking splash of personal color within a complex system. That’s the feeling here: the search for that one clear moment of recognition within the fog of illness and loss.
The track doesn’t offer easy comfort. Instead, it lingers on the disquieting idea of inherited purpose, of being handed a task from a life that’s concluded. What does one do with a legacy when the instructions are lost to static, carried away on the last breath?
