Melanie Durrant offers up a rousing tribute to gritty soul stylings with her newest track, "Four Seasons." But Durrant opts out of pairing the upbeat throwback melody with the typical cliché-ridden schoolgirl lyrics found in such tunes. Instead, she digs deep into feelings of hurt and heartbreak to layer the song with outward emotion — somehow creating a cohesive mash-up of awkward elements.
With a bit of an Amy Winehouse growl, Durrant gets playful with poetry. "Don’t call me summer / I fell for you in the fall / No one to guide your spring me back in the cold and winter after all," she recites, later delving into more prose on pain. With enough of it circling around her slowly dying romance, her harmonies, ad-libs and (in tune) wails allow Melanie to take over the tune and really define her sound with it. It’s far less jazzy than “Gone,” but "Four Season" still has a powerful performance — one that has haunting coincidences, back-in-the-day soul and familiar life experiences to make it feel like a familiar old standard.
