Shubham Kundu is a young singer-songwriter from Nagpur who doesn’t just make music under his own solo moniker; he’s also part of a duo called Cinnamon Cigars, and that’s good context for his new single ‘Faith’. That duo sees him in a more minimalist indie light, you know, acoustic guitars and mildly emotional lyrics. It’s what we all like. ‘Faith’, while being his sixth single, puts across an interesting image for an artist. We as listeners love creating mental constructs of what musicians are as people, do we not? Well, by that metric, Shubham is shooting for stadiums of people singing their hearts out to decidedly maximalist pop. That’s fun!

Every element that forms a chill indie ballad meant for late-afternoon listening is turned up to 12 on this tune. Acoustic guitars are cool and sound a bit homegrown for the most part. Here, they are extra jangly and almost stove your head in with how upfront they are. We love some warm, woolly piano chords to give some body to an emotional song. Here? The pianos are phat, and there’s a layer of keys and strings that is so far in front of the mix that it’s almost actively challenging Shubham’s vocals (of which there are doubles to begin with). And all this is before the percussion, which has these colossal drum hits that belong in the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It doesn’t even stop there. What Shubham uses to somehow up the drama (if that was even possible) towards the end of the song is some strings that belong in the last scene of a Nolan film and some more piano. This is very much pop in its content, and to be fair, none of it could be identified as remarkable or fresh at face value. But here, every possible ‘feels’ knob is pushed to its absolute maximum. ‘Faith’ is a quiet pop ballad that gets almost comically epic when you max out your headphones. Couldn’t say that very often.