Shand's Releases the Intimate New Track "Pearl"
Article by Keir Nicoll
Shand is a beautifully soulful singer/songwriter, with a new song called “Pearl.” This song is obviously a pearl of wisdom about a woman who has left so many behind and “Won't turn back for me/just another in a line.” It opens with spare and bluesy guitar-playing. Then his singing begins. He just wishes his love wouldn't go. He wants her and not to be alone. She lets her life unfold. She has the world at her feet but she is not going to choose him and she is just a “pearl shining out in the street.” The songwriter is thinking that she is being misled, as there is beautifully lilting piano and telecaster-sounding blues-lines throughout the song. He feels like “a boy just wrapped up in defeat/hoping this isn't the end.” There are beautiful vocal harmonies as the strumming in the background carries the song into a guitar-solo that reverbs-out over the drums and bass backing the song. It is uplifting, out of a sad time. He feels that he is only one of a litany of others who have been left behind. The piano reaffirms the dramatic sadness of the song, where the one singing is constantly losing with this woman – the ideal object of his affections. As the instruments slowly take the song out, he sings of his hope that this isn't the end. But it seems that it can only be the end. It is so sad – this song, as it carries the listener along. There is lots of weighted pause in this song. The instrumentation and vocals cause a beautiful flow that brings this number along like a river of song. The piano seems to question the intentions of lovers and their animations of love and respect and heartfelt insights. The guitar is likewise meandering through the fields of love, bringing the questions of the meaning of life to the fore – where the potential loss of a lovers-life that could have been the be-all and end-all. It sounds like there is a mandolin also used to beautifully strumming effect.
Shand is a songwriter, sound engineer and guitarist from Vancouver BC. He has been working in the Vancouver music scene for the last 13 years. His influences include the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Leon Bridges, Carloe King and Jeff Beck. He has a slow, soulful and harmoniously melodic sensibility to his songwriting. He sings like he has some good ideas about others in the world. In this song, it is a girl who he perceives so clearly. “Pearl” is Shand's debut single and will be available on all streaming platforms on March 11, 2022. It is about a girl who broke someone's heart. The song construes that she may have made the wrong decisions. But really, the narrator is just bitter about her not having chosen him. Shand is breathing life into new musical directions of a musical space where a fresh imagining of alternative soul can be. This track was written, produced and performed by Tom Shand.
There is no doubt that Shand has found a mine-shaft into the depths of love, where he believes that something truly magical can happen. However, he is not feeling that this is going to truly happen in his song, as he already lets the girl go into her own dimension, although he wishes that it would come to be that they would 'stay together'. It is unclear in the song if they even were lovers but yet, he still wishes that it would not end. So there is some hope for love in there, even if it is not clear what it is that they could have done with their love-affair, had it actually happened.