Ahmedabad’s Meera Desai has built up quite the catalogue over the last couple years. Be it her solo material, her collaborations or her jazz-folk material with her quintet, the quality of output is pretty darn high. That she keeps this standard going on her latest single ‘Keys’ is no surprise then. It’s a quiet song in its essence, but it does provide a nice, open base for her to bring her vocal chops to the party. Turns out she is more than capable of hard-carrying a track with her voice, and that isn’t particularly surprising either. In fact, there’s nothing out of the ordinary to speak of here, but there is absolutely a lot to be appreciated.

‘Keys’ is produced really well (it’s Raag Sethi, of course) in terms of how it keeps its instrumentation simple and laid back. The drum groove adds a bit of flavour and nothing else. There’s an acoustic guitar that provides a bit of rhythm and the main instrumental ‘melody’, and a bit of bass. That’s about it for the most part, and what does that set the stage for? Vocal harmonies! The song is absolutely full of them, and this one element lifts everything up. Meera opts for some interesting choices on the hooks that go over really, really well. On other occasions, she allows herself to have a single vocal; that’s clear as a bell too. This combination works great and makes the song’s five and a half minutes go by in a manner that is more serene than sudden. That could be chalked up to a lack of dynamics, but that isn’t true, because there’s variation in every layer and every little harmony when these sounds do pop up. ‘Keys’ doesn’t have any switch-ups, changes of tempo or groove, and no particularly explosive moments. But in that calm, there’s much to pick out and explore. That is a job well done and a song well written.