by Amity Hereweard
Hitting play and listening closely, you will hear the foundation in the guitar and groove, but the allure itself is drawn by the voice. Artur Menezes’ single “Once Again” builds within this blues-rock frame with down-tuned guitars, a grounded backbeat, and a bass line that settles the listener into a groove in blues-rock terrain.
Within this space, the vocal does not arrive as a passenger, but as a guiding force. Beginning in a restrained, low-register, speak-sung delivery in the verse, Menezes establishes a controlled emotional baseline. This is gradually expanded in his vocal performance through shifts in register, tone, and phrasing. As the voice evolves, so too does the track: the rhythm section grows more active, the guitar broadens its textural reach, and the arrangement deepens in density. What provides shape and flow is “Once Again” has a structure dictated by instrumentation that is shaped from within as each vocal change prompts a corresponding response from the band and Menezes’ guitar playing.
From this initial restraint, the track’s movement is traced through the voice itself. Menezes begins to stretch the line from verse to verse. His phrases lengthen, the register lifts, and a subtle grit enters his tone, signaling the shift in the arrangement. By the first chorus, the vocal has already defined the scale of the moment: fuller projection, sharper rhythmic accents, and sustained tones that require a broader sonic frame.
The band responds in kind. Aaron Haggerty’s drums move from a spacious backbeat into more active patterns, while Pops Magellan’s bass locks in with increased urgency, tightening the groove rather than simply amplifying it. This relationship holds across each return to the form. With every intensification in the vocals, a corresponding expansion in rhythmic activity and textural weight is derived by the band and guitar. The result is a clear chain of causality: the voice initiates, and the band translates, allowing the track to grow through accumulation to tell its story.
Within this evolving system, the guitar emerges as an extension of the vocal trajectory. Early on, it remains anchored to the riff, contained and declarative. As the voice intensifies, the guitar begins to answer: fills become more frequent, textures thicken, and the phrasing loosens into something more conversational. This gradual expansion naturally leads into the solo, which arrives not as a break but as a culmination. Crucially, Menezes continues to sing through this passage, preserving narrative continuity and avoiding the fragmentation typical of the style. The solo becomes a point of convergence, a meeting of accumulated vocal energy, rhythmic momentum, and textural density that meet at their peak. What might traditionally serve as a spotlight instead functions as a synthesis, reinforcing the track’s central logic: expression builds through connection. Even the backing vocals, particularly the added layer from Sara Williams, serve to widen the frame at key moments, reinforcing the lift without redirecting it.
When the track resolves, it does not collapse so much as return. The closing phrase, “here I go again,” lands as a signal, guiding the music back toward its original groove and cadence. Structurally carrying and releasing the weight of what has unfolded. The guitar settles, the rhythm section lightens, and the density recedes.
Artur Menezes brings a sense of form as a complete cycle in his single, “Once Again.” The result is an introduction to an artist who frames recurrence as transformation, where each return is informed by prior intensity. And at the center of that motion is his voice and guitar, initiating, expanding, and ultimately determining when the structure resets.
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