Zach Montana grew up in a small western town with a deep reverence for purist songwriting and old-fashioned rock and roll, but his music has never been content to just replicate those foundations, and “Son,” from his new album Sum of Parts, is a clear example of that restlessness. The album as a whole wrestles with identity as something assembled from incomplete, contradictory pieces, people who need connection while pushing others away, memories that comfort even as they slip further out of reach, and “Son” distills that struggle into one of the record’s most emotionally direct moments.
The song opens in quiet, acoustic reflection, built around childhood imagery, hide-and-seek, circus tents, a sense of innocence Montana keeps circling back to and asking where it went. From there it builds into something far more devastating, addressing a figure who could be read as a lost child, a vanished younger self, or an identity adulthood has slowly worn away; the ambiguity is clearly intentional. By its final stretch, the song has moved into imagery of real loss and self-destruction, and it doesn’t soften any of it for the listener.
Absolutely stellar and breathtaking use of harmony to tell a story here, and the production and sound choices amplify the emotion at every turn, particularly in how the arrangement expands from restrained folk into heavier, theatrical rock right alongside the lyric’s own escalation from nostalgia into grief. Approach with caution, because this one really might make you cry.
Produced, recorded, and arranged entirely by Montana himself, with mixing and mastering from William Anspach, “Son” doesn’t offer anything close to a resolved or comfortable ending. It sits with contradiction and pain instead of compromising, which is what makes it particularly compelling.
