Synth Single Review: “Night Terrors” by Autumn White
Review by Karl Magi
Autumn White’s “Night Terrors” is a plea for peace and an end to the narrator’s broken nights. The song begins as a synth drifts with Autumn White’s vulnerable voice, moving with reverberant emotion. The rough synth slices while a slowly trickling note pattern moves in the distance.
The kick drum throbs in a bursting rhythm as Autumn White shows off his full range above the darkly guiding bass. The echoing vocal production adds to the heartbreaking feelings in the lyrics. Lacerating notes cut like the lyric’s pain while Autumn White presses them home with his broken, beautiful voice.
Xylophone adds a fragile trickle as the thumping rhythm drives and the vocals burn fervently. A delicate tone pattern ripples as the cleanly cutting synth descends and the rhythm guides before the chorus climbs again, tearing free from the lead singer with every ounce of his heart on display. The words trace a spectral filigree as the ticking percussion moves. Tiny notes ripple into silence.
“Would you wait for me, would you hold my hand?” is what the narrator asks the song’s subject. He asks, “As I head into the light, would you kiss me without a sound?” He admits to being confused and lost, questioning if he can ever be found. He says, “As I head into the light, I need an angel now.”
As our storyteller walked through the dark, all he could see was the song subject’s silver halo. He describes her as “like a girl from a magazine, with a gun in your hand and a bullet with my name written on the side.” He can see his pain “like a mirror reflected in your eyes.”
“In between every breath I take, I'm alone in a crowded place,” and with every word he speaks, the narrator remains alone. He points out that his mind is the enemy when he can't sleep and can barely breathe, adding, “These night terrors are killing me.”
While the clock’s second hand “cuts through my life like a blade,” the narrator is fighting that clock “like a ghost in the electric haze.” He runs until his lungs give out and screams until he’s got nothing left. He concludes, “Bury me deep, in the place that I sleep.”
