What does it mean to be alive? It’s a question we’ve likely asked ourselves plenty of times, though when Tavish Westwood extends it in his haunting new track “What It Means”, it feels more like a gravitational statement than any open-minded query. That’s the relative force behind Westwood’s London-based project Denh Izen, offering glimmers of sounds that strike familiar with eerie softness, his loose guitar-rock barreling along haphazardly as he emerges oft-center as a sort of tortured crooner, a pained lounge-man who’s seen life’s complexity in ways his reported teen age suggests to be impossible. The track’s meandering slowcore shift is undercut only by Westwood’s damp growl, a deep baritone that elicits a weird sense of trust. So when he offers up a lyrical refrain like “you’re a waste, you’re a waste, of space”, you nearly wished you never pondered the initial question in the first place. And yet here the fuck we are, hitting repeat over and over again, entranced by that voice. “‘What It Means’ is a soppy song about something silly, but it means a lot to me,” Westwood says. “It’s not a cry for help, but hopefully a helpful cry.” Denh Izen’s forthcoming EP Storage Solutions drops August 31 (release party: September 8 at The Five Bells in London) and we can’t wait to hear what’s next behind the grate.
