Focus Track “Garden Song”: An Eight-Track Exploration of Emotion, Open to Personal Interpretation and the Complexities of Life, Love, and Loneliness
LP Review: The Spikes – First Light
With First Light, The Spikes crafts a world where darkness doesn’t suffocate—it reveals. Across eight meticulously sculpted tracks, the Rome-born, Berlin-based artist transforms tension and tenderness into a cinematic meditation on emotion, memory, and meaning.
At its center lies “Garden Song”, the LP’s emotional axis and most human moment. It’s a love song that doesn’t hide behind metaphor; instead, it rests quietly in vulnerability. The song’s soft ache—both intimate and universal—feels like the calm after chaos, a breath between heartbreak and healing. “No matter what happens out there in the real world,” Iago Haussman (The Spikes) reflects, “there is always safety in each other’s arms. Or each other’s garden.”
That sentiment echoes throughout First Light. Where “Sapling Tree” finds beauty in persistence and “Dancing (In the Palm of My Hand)” revisits Gatsby’s yearning for the unattainable, “Garden Song” strips everything back to what remains: connection. The accompanying video, filmed in a Roman neighborhood social club, turns this intimacy outward—an inclusive portrayal of love that transcends age, gender, and class.
Musically, First Light feels like an exhale. Sparse yet immersive, each track unfolds like a fragment of a dream you can’t quite place. The production is subdued, the poetry sharp. Haussman’s use of the Burroughs-style “cut-up” writing technique adds a haunting unpredictability, allowing meaning to bloom organically.
This isn’t an album that tells you what to feel—it asks you to find yourself within it. First Light doesn’t chase resolution. It lingers, shimmers, and evolves in the dark, reminding us that even in shadow, there’s a pulse of something alive—something real.
FIRST LIGHT LP Tracklisting:
(Focus Track: “Garden Song”)
- Sapling Tree
- Garden Song
- Set Me Free
- Jungle Boy
- By the Moors
- Dancing (In the Palm of My Hand)
- Electric Cannibal
- My Fair Love
For more information and to connect with The Spikes, please visit Website, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify.
About The Spikes
Iago Haussman, known professionally as The Spikes, is a genre-defying singer-songwriter, poet, and painter. Born and raised in Rome, Italy, fluent in Italian, Iago brings a cinematic sensibility to his work, shaped by a childhood spent on film sets and a lifelong immersion in the arts.
The Spikes’ debut self-titled LP introduced listeners to his minimalist yet emotionally charged sound. His breakout single, “Guns for the Children”—a stark meditation on violence and lost innocence—released in June 2025, quickly gaining traction, with the accompanying music video at over 30,000 views on YouTube. He followed with “Dancing (In the Palm of My Hand),” a hypnotic exploration of fragility and control, whose video is now nearing 40,000 views.
More than a music project, The Spikes is an evolving artistic identity. Iago’s multidisciplinary work—across music, visual art, and literature—reflects a cohesive aesthetic that is poetic, unflinching, and deeply human. He has exhibited paintings in galleries and is preparing to release his second book of poetry with select pieces performed at live readings, and co-founded the punk band Delicate Prey at age 16.
Splitting his time between the U.S. and Berlin, The Spikes will release new singles throughout summer 2025, leading up to his eight-track LP, First Light set for release on October 31, 2025.
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