The only thing more mindboggling than the quality of this song is the fact that its creator, George van den Broek, was only 17 when it came out. Better known by his stage moniker Yellow Days, he’s an old soul living a young life.
Keeping a low profile and giving few public appearances, Yellow Days wants his music to stand for itself --- the same reason for which the cover art on both his debut EP and album show him and a guitar with patchwork covering his face. The colour choices of the art are not random either: his synesthesia allows him to connect music and colour, an ability shared by few other artists.
Categories like jazz, blues and psychedelic soul have been used to describe his style but none of them suffice, exemplifying his claim that there’s just no such thing as genre anymore. His music is easily recognized for its hazy, hypnotic sound, but it's his titanic vocals that ultimately steal the show. They inject his music with an air of confident wisdom.
A Little While is the jewel of his 2015 debut EP Harmless Melodies, bedroom-produced at his Surrey home in Southeast England. The song exhibits a quality he once explained to Billboard: “You can make musical instruments weep in certain melody.”
Yellow Days has described that A Little While to about the last time he spent with his first love: “We both knew it was coming to an end but out of respect for the time we shared, I stayed for a little while.” He opens with a sample from a Charles Bukowski interview in which the writer defines love: “Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just there a little while, and then it burns away.”
The funky rhythm and hazy instrumentals then kick in, as his insane voice takes off with the first verse: “Broken by love, this hurt divides itself / Decided that kissing you is just bad for my health." Such a good line (one of a few), though the song's lyrics are easily overshadowed by the power of his voice. (He could be reading his grocery list and I’d probably still get goosebumps.)
A dreamy and intoxicating atmosphere hooks you while he draws the melody upward and lets it all out in the chorus. There’s so much emotion in his voice, as if he’s using every bit of himself to deliver each note, until a mellow synth solo slowly carries the song away four minutes in. There’s no grand ending, perfectly mimicking the Bukowski line that the track started with: the music, like a fog, hazes around you and then slowly dissipates.
Happy listening!
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