A Review of Bobby Freemont’s ‘clementine skies’

Bobby Freemont is a Toronto indie artist who designs his own artwork, builds his own sonic worlds, and makes music that is both fiercely intimate and completely fearless in its production ambition.

His debut album The Death of Bobby Freemont is on its way this spring, and every single he’s released in the build-up has deepened the world he’s constructing rather than simply filling a release schedule. ‘clementine skies’ is the latest, and it might be the most powerful thing he’s put out yet.

Written after the passing of his grandfather, the song deals in the specific, disorienting experience of grief — the way beautiful memories and painful reality don’t take turns neatly, but crash into each other without warning or apology. Bobby and co-producer Stephen Kerr built something that reflects that emotional chaos completely honestly. There’s a melodic tenderness running through the track that pulls you in close, and then the production — drawing from the experimental textures of Kanye’s Yeezus and 808s & Heartbreak — lets noise and tension into the picture in a way that a cleaner, more conventional grief song would never dare. And then comes the Smashing Pumpkins-style wall-of-sound guitar finale that builds to a genuinely cathartic release. It is a bold, brilliant production choice, and it lands with full force.

Instagram, Spotify

The emotional logic is impeccable. Grief is not a clean or linear thing, and ‘clementine skies’ refuses to pretend otherwise. It shifts between beauty and chaos because that is what loss actually feels like — that is the experience being documented here, and the production honours it rather than tidying it up. That kind of honesty, combined with that level of sonic ambition, is rare at any stage of a career. Finding it on a debut series of singles is genuinely exciting.

If you’ve lost someone, this one is going to find you somewhere deep and specific. And if you haven’t, it’ll still make you feel everything. Get this on immediately.