"Renegade" is the second track from Melbourne-based indie folk rock quintet The Paper Kites' sophomore album twelvefour (2015). The album's title allude to lead singer Sam Bentley's 'concept' for the album: testing out the theory that an artist's creative peak is between the hours of midnight and 4 am. This perfectly explains the song's opening verses: 'Had a dream that I sent for your love in the morning/ And you came to me at about a quarter to three'.
"Renegade" has rather cryptic lyrics - 'Cause I'm a part of the world I live in now/ Only set apart from the world I live in now/ Ghost of a renegade' - but the song's immediate appeal lies in the way in which it gently reels the listener with Bentley's subdued vocals, a pleasant and progressive drumbeat, and the overall atmosphere of understatedly lush, ambient mystery. The song slowly builds upon its lyrical persona's quiet self-relevations, while Bentley's vocals work in sublime synchrony with the song's intricate guitar riffs.
The song's lyrics may be about the lyrical persona's need to establish an identity that is set apart from his social world, but as The Rolling Stone's Jonny Nail notes, the album's underlying rhythm is decidedly optimistic despite its twilight-y instrospection: "twelvefour triumphantly breaks from it's own restraints, optimistically and confidently pushing towards the impending sunrise rather than wallowing in those dead moments". As Juliana Van Amsterdam concludes, twelvefour places the listener in a paradoxical space ("Half-awake and yet at your most lucid and creative") - a surprisingly novel and interesting place to be.
