This new collaboration is probably the hardest thing to say anything about in a musical sense. What would you expect from Manas Jha (NY singer-songwriter with a bunch of great music under his belt), Warren Mendonsa and Jai Row Kavi except a song of the highest quality? No one in their right mind would think otherwise, and ‘Liberate’, a biting and gritty single with some obviously great instrumentation and writing, meets any expectation. Duh.

Manas does sing about an important issue here, substance abuse – the song’s grungy and old-school presentation is great for this. The purely mid-90s chorus sounds like a classic Alice In Chains line and the more uptempo verses are from further back. Manas keeps his voice thin yet firm so that he can rise up over the backing instrumentation and still stay comfortably back in the mix when he needs to. And of course, what needs to be said about the rest of it? Warren and Jai cycle through strong riffs, a short guitar interlude with the kind of texture and groove you can already imagine in your head and a rousing double-time final refrain with an ease any musician can only be jealous of. The song actually stays in its heavy comfort zone for quite a while before its short foray into a more atmospheric place; the large ringing chords in the chorus are tailor-made for that short emotional break from headbanging at a live gig. It really is difficult to say too much about the presentation and execution here on ‘Liberate’, because it is done both inspiringly and unsurprisingly well, if that makes any sense. The only really shocking about this song would be if you didn’t go listen to it.