While there isn’t much to be found about Billy Vicente on the Wild Web, this self-titled goth & shoegaze artist appeared to me in a mythic reel-pull circa the spring of 2024 — just under a year after the release of his top hit, “The Painted Bird.” Now, entering the spring of 2025, I found myself blessed again with none other than Vicente’s debut album, Take Me Back To Where I’m From So I Could Burn It To The Ground. Try saying that three times fast.
Jokes aside, Take Me Back offers a moody and almost nostalgic experience with its ever-shifting guitar and drum-driven melodies. Each track reflects a different facet of Vicente’s melancholy aesthetic. It reminds me of discovering that certain niche of remixable rock music in middle school – in the best way!
Opening up with the head-empty, disconnected-from-reality sound of “Lipgloss,” the album transitions into the more gravelly guitar of “Blue Forest” & “Tipareth” before entering the eerie calm of “ThePaintedBird.acoustic.wav.” The quiet sound continues with the slow groove of “Movie” and yearning of “Frog Letter.” All at once, the energy spikes with “Local Crossroads,” the last single and most rock-out track of the album. Riding the come-down is “Fun” and “Sailor’s Paradise,” two songs that will wrap you up in their hypnotic upbeat melodies. Of course, the album wouldn’t be complete without “Three Years Worth of Words.” The chilling final track closes with samples of babies crying – my favorite instrument!
Top Tracks (in loosely ranked order):
1) Local Crossroads
2) Three Years Worth of Words
3) Fun
4) Movie
5) Sailor’s Paradise
Honorable Mention:
ThePaintedBird.acoustic.wav
Descriptor: Timeless Jam
A song’s importance to an album can be determined in a number of ways: production quality, lyrical significance, and memorability, to name a few. “Local Crossroads” hits pretty much all of those categories. After all, the chorus’ lyrics are directly tied to the album title: “Take me back to where I’m from / and burn it to the ground” is essentially the entire phrase! Right at the intro, it becomes apparent that this is the climax of the album, a culmination of all the tension and emotions that’ve been building up the grittier, slow-burn songs. The drop at “break” and the closing guitar solo both highlight how intense Vicente’s sound can be, and I wonder if/when more driving melodies like this will be produced.
Descriptor: Epic
This closing track feels like a bit of an answer to “Frog Letter,” which covers helplessly drifting apart in a relationship. Seemingly responding to his lover’s correspondence, “Three Years” opens with the line “I wrote this down for you / It’s been three years of words for you.” Right before the instrumental breakdown, he finishes with “Here’s my last [?] letter to you.” The guitar work in the instrumental is what really holds the intrigue in this piece before spiraling out into the strings and screaming babies. The distortion as it trails out reminds me of all the atmospheric tracks that would give me paranoia as a kid. I love the different movements in this song, and it does excellently to finish off an equally varied album!
“Fun”
Descriptor: AMV Material
Despite being the shortest track of the album (2:19), “Fun” has that flow that grants it infinite replayability potential. I may have shown up for the singles, but I guarantee that this track will be what keeps me listening to this album years from now. The beach rock intro riff catches the listener’s attention, but it’s the smooth, string-like synth of the intro that acts as the spine holding the intrigue of the whole song together. It acts like the narrative voice of the track, which is boosted by some of the clearest lyrics present on the album. The title sells as advertised: it’s fun.
“Movie”
Descriptor: Groovy, “Absolute Cinema”
The song takes a moment to build, but it’s worth the wait. A minute of tense string instrumentals set the establishing shot for a very Eagles-coded stage. I draw this line from the distinct electric guitar sound and almost metronomic progression. It’s difficult to pin down why this track pulls me in over some of the others, but it must be because of how perfectly it captures that classic feel, both topically & stylistically. Between cinematic string swells — ba dum tss — and the soft, romantic lyrics, “Movie” tells a story that I can’t help but listen to.
Descriptor: Lo-fi for Mariners
Oh god, it’s “Octopus’ Garden” all over again. Not actually; “Sailor’s Paradise” is a soft-spoken, swaying sort of song that implements its aquatic elements quite artistically. On my first listen, I struggled to place what the easygoing sound reminded me of. I landed on “café music” for a while before I remembered that lo-fi existed, and then it clicked. This is 100% a study jam song. Honestly, my only critique is that I wish there were more bubbles. The sampling section after the first chorus is super fun and blends soothingly with the distortion effects of the guitar. Ah well. Much like the mermaid, it’s just not something society is ready for.
And last but not least:
Descriptor: Existential
This acoustic rehash of Vicente’s “The Painted Bird” manages to take the melody in a completely different direction. While the original has an orchestral vaporwave/mallcore kind of sound, “acoustic.wav” has the tone of an unsettled grave. The melody becomes a ghost of itself, quietly hidden and stretched out into what feels more like a ballad. Artistically? Magnificent. It’s just a bit too slow for me to listen to as regularly as the others.
If this review has gotten you interested in Billy Vicente’s work, don’t stop at Take Me Back! He’s got a whole compilation album and multiple EPs from 2023, not including the multiple singles released since then. Currently, he clocks in at just under 85k monthly Spotify listeners, but I’ve got a good feeling he’s only going to keep rising. Perhaps one da, we’ll get a concert review for this legend. But for now, I can only wish you happy listening — and Vicente himself, a happy first album!
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