New York songwriter Eshan Agarwal has always had a knack for making feelings sound cinematic, but “The Siren” (released Jan 23, 2026) is where he stops looking at love through soft-focus glass and starts staring straight into the undertow. Working with producer Marrick Smith via the Biscuit Head Collective, and with Anne Preis on mixing and Ian Kimmel on mastering—Eshan leans into a modern, layered sound that matches the song’s central idea: the bravest move isn’t running toward the voice that calls you… It’s swimming past it, even when your lungs burn.
“The Siren” opens like fog rolling over the Hudson, as slow guitar strums cut through a misty, haunting soundscape while Eshan sings with deliberate calm, as if he’s measuring each word before it can pull him back under. With wind in the background, the eerie wail feels less like ambience and more like the relationship itself, hovering at the edge of the mix. Then the percussion creeps in, rustling and pulsating, turning the track from late-night confession into something catchier and more insistent, as the groove reflects the steady, repetitive obsession that’s so hard to shake.
Lyrically, he paints the push-pull with painful clarity. He sings, “We danced the devil’s beat,” setting the stakes, and from there it’s a carousel of promises, control, and relapse as he goes, “You keep me on a leash, your puppet to command”—before the narrative finally breaks toward release. The chorus is the pivot point, and it hits like a gasp of air: “I was lost, but now I’m free… Swimming past your song at sea… While I rise in harmony.”
The production detail sells the metaphor with the siren cry threaded through the track, subtle but ever-present, like temptation hiding in your peripherals. Even the quieter outro lines admit the truth nobody wants to: when things finally get calm, that song can still return “again and again.” But Eshan doesn’t romanticize the cycle—he names it, steps out of it, and leaves the door shut.
By the end, “The Siren” feels built for replay because it’s honest, as a haunted, hooky reminder that survival sometimes sounds like walking away in tune.
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Review by: Naomi Joan