Album Review/ Indie Rock : Reeya Banerjee’s ‘This Place’

Reeya Banerjee is a singer-songwriter, storyteller and a rock artist that will make your teeth hurt. In the best way of course. Her edgy style combined with her vulnerability creates an intoxicating sonic atmosphere. She bares it all, her sharpness and softness and gives it all to her sound. The result is a coarse, visceral, vivid, and powerful repertoire. Her latest release is ‘This Place’, an album that explores moments of her life; moments of love, heartache, connection, joy, and survival, projecting it onto a sonic space with brilliant cinematic appeal. This collection is the artist’s second full-length album, in which she gets into an explosive flow of literary songwriting and grand instrumentals. It paints fantastic frames, landscapes of a life lived with immersively humane moments and sentiments. 

‘Picture Perfect’ opens the album. It is a hard rock song that is loaded with exuberant riffs, chunky basslines, and some bright moments of melodic guitar. And her vocals, like long hallways, forge emotional pathways into this space. There is so much emotional value in her lyrics; sweeping through the soundscape and detailing it even more. Progressively, the guitar work gets a little more loaded, both in energy and layers. It grows, snowballs and becomes a real presence in your spaces. 

In ‘Blue and Gray’, ‘Misery of a Place’, and ‘Runner’, we see similar leaps in instrumentals and thematic presentation. There is so much dynamism, a force almost to the music that seems to be a large extension of her vocals. The chemistry, complexity and the reality of these songs flow into our world, it awakens our own experiences with them. It compels memories. And in that way, it becomes our world too, a place of connection and understanding. 

On the other hand, in tracks like ‘Snow’, ‘For the First Time’, and ‘Sink In’, we see a more slow, deep and resonant flow. Her vocals echo through moments of reflecting instrumentals, glassy guitar aftermath and hypnotic chords. There’s that cerebral call, an immersive space that forms indirectly, more conceptually. And finally, ‘Upstate Rust’ concludes the track with that same rife, same unbridled enthusiasm. There’s a sense of bounding activity, immense energy and a posed high that you can’t help but join in on. Listen Now! 

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The album is available for streaming on popular sites like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music! 

You can listen to ‘This Place’ by Reeya Banerjee here -