Gen Bello‘s vision of love is rooted in immediacy. Her music tends to have a snug feeling: enmeshed in closed-armed flesh as the shrill from her falsetto trace doodles on their skin. “Love So Sweet,” the standout track from her latest EP, This Again, finds her smitten by this level of proximity. The NYC native growth as a songwriter and singer is impressive to witness in real-time. Her vibrato is composed, shifting in and out from her head voice and falsetto as she sells solace in one breath “I want to live in your company,” while extracting the truth in another, “I want to count how many times/you said ‘I love you first and that your mine.’
The song starts with supple chords illuminating the soundscape and an inclining synth, creating an atmosphere that is lucid and dreamlike— corresponding to Gen‘s sensation of encountering the surreal. Once the hooks arrive, the synth returns, elevating the soundscape like the morning tide. Drums thump harder, strings plunk with the same intensity of a whisper as Gen‘s upper register ascends into self-assuring lilts of forever with a smidge of hyperbole, “I can’t see the way you look/It’s killing me slowly,” completely submitting herself to the surreal for the transparency it provides.
