David Gielan: “This Old Burning House” – a saddened journey across troubled waters
Singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, David Gielan, who has played to packed shows at all of L.A.’s premiere venues – The Sunset Room, The Roxy, The Whisky, and The Viper Room – is currently promoting his single, “This Old Burning House”. The track is a master class in how to develop and perform songs that simply stop you in your tracks, without doing anything gimmicky or transcendental.
I liked David Gielan a lot simply because he has a great voice, sings with passion and subtly experiments with sounds and feelings. This song is contemplative, thoughtful and a strange mixture of mellow and edgy. David offers some of the best pairings of poetry and melody out there today. Whether you’re going to chill out, reflect or brood, then David Gielan is your guy.
And in “This Old Burning House”, you’re awash in a saddened sort of imagery, a musical journey where you’re holding on for help across troubled waters, watching someone running from a relationship that is in an irreparable and deteriorating state.
Sometimes we may feel trapped or hopeless in a tortured relationship; and David’s song somehow brings musical warmth through the cold, hard truths of love, loss, and pain. He shows why we need to capture the moments that really mean something, while we’re in a relationship, before it’s too late and we need to get out of that ‘old burning house’.
Lyrically David seems to be at his illustrative best, as the song reveals the depth of pain over a relationship gone wrong and the protagonist’s inability to completely understand why, yet at the same time realizing that each partner is better off alone.
David Gielan and his featured guest players, Kaitlin Wolfberg on violin and Rome da Luce on the keyboards draw out the purest sense of the song, showing us what’s essentially great in music. This is simply phenomenal all-round artistry, without all the frills and fuss.
