Premiere: John Santiago bares his anguish with new song, ‘Don’t Blink’

There are singers, and then, there are singers ⎯⎯  those who make the mountaintops crumble, the Red Sea to part and force you to your knees. When John Santiago, best known as frontman of the blues-rock outfit Johnny & the Bootlegs, tears into a lyric, you not only stand at attention, but you’ll probably cry a little, too. He paints on a monster-side canvas and wields his voice like a brush, slathering on every possible shade of color, a cathartic release for both himself and the listener, who he has beckoned into his space for a time, leaving them emotionally exhausted and charged in the same breath. His new song “Don’t Blink,” premiering today, which was cut in the most raw of circumstances, allows his voice to quake and flutter and hits you squarely in the throat.

“I had you / You had me / But I played a fool not in the way that you might see / But I died inside, and I took my love with me / And I left you to be,” he sings in frayed, graveled whispers, with only acoustic guitar accompaniment. He lays his remorse on the cold, hard ground and exposes the pain he’s caused, a fiery wake cresting the horizon. His act of penance is gutting and harsh. “I don’t deserve your love,” he screams, pouring out every last drop of anguish to behold in grave detail.

The scalding performance, perhaps among the year’s best, is both hesitant (containing Santiago’s “we’re rolling, he says” candid introduction) and heartfelt. Set down at Brooklyn’s Studio G with producer Jeff Berner (Heliotropes, Weird Owl, Gunfight!), the song captures life’s tragedy in its purest form. “This song means a lot to me. I’m not a perfect person, and through my trials and tribulations, I’ve hurt some people along the way,” he tells B-Sides & Badlands of the song, which “literally came flowing out of me one day. After the first couple of lines, I was smart enough to take my iPhone, prop it up and press record on the camera. That’s what I do with a lot of my songs when they begin. The only difference is that I think I only changed one line in this song.”

The innate rawness of the iPhone recording triggered something deeply animalistic, raging in ferociousness on the ultimate product. “I decided to get into a studio and record it exactly the way that it came out. This track is unmastered, just the way the song was released from my trifecta of mind, body and soul,” he reflects. “Don’t Blink” creaks with an almost impish solemnity, an urgent underpinning that is only subtle at first before later erupts from deep within Santiago’s chest. It follows the recent release of his band’s new EP, continuing to bend and mingle front-porch blues with hints of soaring, blistered indie-rock. “[The band is] where we kick a bunch of ideas, instrumentation, branding and production around, but I’ve never really known what to do with a lot of the acoustic, sweeter stuff.”

Santiago has since pocketed even more tunes in the vein of “Don’t Blink”s visceral capacity. He eyes a forthcoming solo project. Expect news in the not-so-distant future.

Listen below:

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