There’s a rare magic in a song that knows exactly how to begin and end
ruben dumars’ Coup de grâce is one of those tracks—a meticulously crafted, introspective journey that grips you from the first note and lingers long after the final fade.
This lo-fi, shoegaze-drenched piece balances the raw intimacy of acoustic guitar with an impressive layering of electric – gifting a rhythm that has a subtle, head bopping pull, that immerses you completely.
The harmonies land with precision—effortlessly moving between delicate and devastating. It’s the kind of song that sticks to your ribs, heavy with mood yet strangely buoyant.
The vibe of The Dandy Warhols and the inventive structure of White Town’s Your Woman come to mind, yet dumars forges a distinct path all his own. Beneath the dreamy melodies lies a shadowy undercurrent, brought to life through layered production, spacious vocal effects, and the way dumars blurs genre lines with ease, channeling everything from shoegaze to dream pop, indie rock to downtempo. The result? A track that feels wholly original yet universally relatable—a sonic mood piece that draws you in and won’t let go.
The lyrics are a gut punch: “Maybe you were running away, you were falling apart, and I can take this pain away, it’s borrowed from my heart.” dumars captures the tension between longing and loss, hope and despair, as his voice glides over a bed of haunting guitars and shimmering synths. The bittersweetness deepens in lines like “Changing memories like changing colors, these distant memories like haunted lovers.” It’s heartbreak spun into poetry, and it lands with a quiet, devastating power.
dumars recorded Coup de grâce in solitude, holed up in his father’s cabin. That isolation seeps into the track’s DNA, imbuing it with a rawness and intimacy that’s impossible to fake. He describes the recording process as therapeutic, battling addiction, grief, and self-doubt in the stillness of those remote months. The imperfect grounding in the cabin lent a unique grit to the guitar tones—a serendipitous imperfection that adds to the song’s textured, unpolished charm.
This is catharsis set to music—a song that feels as expansive as it does introspective, as edgy as it is delicate. dumars has an instinctive understanding of how to take you somewhere entirely new, only to land the perfect closing moment that leaves you reeling. Coup de grâce isn’t just a track; it’s an emotional landscape, a memory you want to revisit, a feeling you can’t quite shake. This is how you start and end a song—with purpose, precision, and a whole lot of heart.
