Synth Single Review: “Closer” by Drew Knight & Aisle 9

by Karl Magi

Drew Knight & Aisle 9’s “Closer” is a meditation on love and desire. The song starts as gargantuan bass vibrates and swells while smoothly rebounding drums move with Drew Knight’s deep velvet voice as it carries the mysterious melody.

As the background flows with tenderness, a percussive pulse shapes the music and Drew Knight captures the lyrics with fervent desire. The rich vocals carry the song’s sentiment with ardent strength, compelling me as they do so. The beat continues to surge powerfully while the bass adds additional propulsion.

Aisle 9 creates a beautiful background that glides in coruscating whorls as arpeggios twirl and the vocals float. A reverberant synth throbs as the rhythm thuds and choral voices ring while the arpeggios move with lissome ease, and the song comes to an end as radiant brightness spills out into silence.

Our storyteller feels that he’s still in time, so he’ll just let it pass because “it feels too good to be mine, like you could disappear tonight.” He says that “if this is all we get, I don’t want to second guess” or look back, so he asks the song’s subject to save their breath.

“We don’t want tonight to end,” so the narrator wants the song’s subject to pull him in closer. He doesn’t want to let them go, but instead wants to “get closer, closer, closer.” He doesn’t trust forever, so he’ll “take what I can get right now.” He doesn’t want to lose control of “something I never had.”