A Review of weyvir - ‘Streets of Love, Pt. 1’
Eight years is a long time to carry a song.
Calcutta-born, Madrid-based multi-instrumentalist and producer weyvir wrote 'Streets of Love, Pt. 1' as a teenager, the chorus arriving first from a place of heartbreak and the frustration of feelings that refused to be spoken aloud. He built the rest of the song around that initial fragment, and has been carrying it with him ever since: through a DIY circuit at Syracuse University, across the Atlantic, through twenty-five thousand solo streams and collaborative work surpassing one million, through everything that constitutes a life changing around a song that stayed constant.
"I haven't ever been able to give up on this song since I wrote it," he says. "And I'm finally giving it the ending it deserves."
The ending is a bright, driving piece of indie rock informed by a specific and revealing constellation of reference points. Band of Horses' 'The Funeral' inspired the chorus. The Wonders' 'That Thing You Do' shaped the beat. The Beach Boys, Supergrass and Arctic Monkeys contributed melodic and rhythmic DNA. The result is something picturesque and pop-rock in surface character, carrying underneath it the weight of a much more complicated emotional history than any of those individual influences would suggest.
The song's central idea pushes against the notion of love as something predetermined or destined. Instead, weyvir is interested in the choices, missed opportunities and unresolved feelings that bring two people together and keep them circling each other. That framing gives 'Streets of Love, Pt. 1' its emotional texture: nostalgic and immediate simultaneously, looking back at something still unresolved and choosing to name it rather than let it remain a feeling without form.
Previous single 'just gotta let u know' blended bossa nova with grunge, pop punk and UK garage. The range is deliberate. weyvir also fronts rock band Hard Fuse. These are not genre exercises but genuine creative explorations from an artist for whom the space between alternative rock and pop has always felt like the most honest place to work.
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