Starting with the kind of garage-influenced percussion leveraged by Hot Chip, Caleb L’Etoile’s Two More Years is a song made of just two notes.
The whole record rides along in the same grunge-y, dirty synth pattern. With L’Etoile’s vocals layered into the mix, and atop one another, the simplistic nature of his performance contrasts to the distorted chaos of the instrumentation.
The combination of the vocal and instrumental elements provide the song a kind of internal innocence. As a song, Two More Years is about the experience of losing someone important from your life, and imagining running into them again. Caleb’s vocals have the feel of an internal monologue, his mind ticking over as he envisions bumping into this person… the mental exercise of trying something on and exploring how it would feel. Does my pulse race? Do we click back into a familiar repartee? Does this still hurt?
Overall, Caleb L’Etoile has made a remarkably affecting piece of music out of something surprisingly minimal. The rawness he employs only adds to the sense of emotional honesty.