Angad Trehan (whose last single was the heartwarming Let It Change featuring vocals by his sister Tanvi Trehan) doesn’t shy away from stating his influences for the new track I Don’t Remember. He makes it evident that it draws inspiration from the work of FINNEAS and Joji.

In fact, even if Trehan didn’t mention it, the “sad pop” influence of the Joji is quite evident. Typical to his sad love ballads, Trehan relies on bittersweet synths and a lazily soulful vocal style to dwell on hos solitude. 

Thematically, I Don’t Remember covers the phase of one’s life when they feel lost, hopeless, and pretty much stuck at doing something that they don’t love. One good thing in terms of the lyrics is that Trehan is by no means, getting preachy. He’s not generalising everyone’s loneliness and neither is he offering any solutions. This song is just meant as a testament, as a way of venting out that frustration that he and many others would feel.

The sound, as mentioned before, does bear a Joji-like aura and hence, makes for perfect nighttime listening. His vocals aren’t too stretched and neither too hushed, striking the right balance for a song like this. Otherwise, often with such themes, the cliche is to either rely on a simple acoustic chord arrangement or to rely on a heavily phased-out edited voice with electronic production. The latter is a style that Joji relies on (especially in his latest album Nectar) but of course, the same formula doesnt work for any and every artist emulating him. 

Trehan preserves his own voice rather than going all out with vocal edits and that somehow adds a more personal touch to I Don’t Remember. So, even if the song does follow a derivative approach, it works well enough in terms of originality.

Verdict: A spacey, dreamy, and tragic track that’s bound to impress fans of artists like Joji. 

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