Maverick Sabre - “Catch You”

This song should come with a warning label. May cause emotional destruction. May derail your entire afternoon. May send Kleenex stock prices into previously uncharted territory. Maverick Sabre has released “Catch You,” and I'd like to know who authorized this level of devastation without first consulting the general public. I was having a perfectly manageable day. There were things on my calendar. People expecting responses. Now I'm staring into the middle distance like a Victorian widow awaiting news from the sea. And that's before we even discuss the music video.

In the video, Maverick stands alone against vast stretches of ocean and hills, swallowed by dark clouds, fog, and relentless rain. His raincoat is doing its absolute best, but the weather has clearly taken something personally. There's an extraordinary visual honesty to watching someone sing through conditions that seem determined to consume him. The distorted guitars and drums push against his soul-soaked voice, creating a collision that's as unsettling as it is magnetic. The music feels like the weather: enormous, unpredictable, and completely indifferent to whether you're prepared for it. And through all of this, Mav sings with the kind of conviction that makes a line like “I'm too young to lose you” feel almost unbearable. I'd recommend bringing an umbrella, but I don't think one is going to help.

Released via FAMM, “Catch You” follows his album Burn The Right Things Down and finds Maverick bringing blues and folk textures into a sound that can turn from intimate to overwhelming in a matter of seconds. There's real force in the contrast between the rough edges of the instrumentation and the raw intensity of his delivery. The guitars don't politely accompany the heartbreak. They seem to be going through something themselves. By the time the song finishes, the storm has passed through the speakers and taken most of my emotional infrastructure with it.