The Singles Bar: Eli Raybon administers spacey ‘Empathy Test’

Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.

You could say we’re in the fury of a full-on ’80s renaissance. From TV reboots to horror remakes and sonic blends of dance-pop synths and new-wave with modern imprints, art and the collective creative consciousness is blossoming in what certainly feels like fresh new ways. Of Generation Z, Eli Raybon pulls from his early brushes with Blade Runner and the work of German electronic band Tangerine Dream (who have scored more than 50 cinematic pieces, including 1983’s Risky Business), and you can feel an authentic pulsating heart seep into every inch of his work. “Empathy Test,” up-linking cosmic murmuring with gaseous orbs, folding in on each layer with light-speed precision, finds the 21-year-old stepping out with a sublime chunk of pop music.

“Stop your protests / Don’t try to resist / We’ve come to administer an empathy test,” sings Raybon, flecks of starry matter circling around his vocal cords. He repurposes the dire search for compassion in a slowly-dying world, the conviction hanging onto each syllable, for a much grander, more pointed, message. “We want to know what’s in your head,” he assures us on the chorus, which quickly lifts off into the star-adorned heavens. Turmoil filling the streets with blood, Raybon’s lyrics are particularly insightful, compressed with throwback mechanics to urge the listener to recall the child-like innocence that continues in small traces within all of us, even as adulthood seems to bring about coldness and violent detachment. “We check for faulty wires / And make sure your gears still turn,” he later sings. His timbre runs icy but heats up the lyrics to a gentle, rolling boil.

Onstage, Raybon’s entire aesthetic is signed, sealed and delivered straight out of Little Shop of Horrors or Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, so it’s no great mystery that his excavations of the past also challenge the future and who we could be next as the human race. “Be patient while we wait for your results,” rings out as an alarm, inducing both an existential crisis and a wave of nostalgia. “Your circuits all connect / The evidence is indisputable….”

“Empathy Test” anchors his new full-length record, Supertoys, out July 12.

Listen below:

Photo Credit: Kevin Blackburn

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