ALBUM: Brimheim – ‘can’t hate myself into a different shape’

“I am going to be completely honest with you,” confesses Danish-Faroese musician Helena Heinesen Rebensdorff aka Brimheim during the opening line of her exquisitely tender track ‘favorite day of the week’. It’s a simple enough statement, but she delivers it with startling conviction through her crystalline vocals and considered instrumentation. It’s this candid, yet tentative approach that makes listening to her debut album, can’t hate myself into a different shape, such a cathartic, rewarding experience. The follow up to her 2020 EP, Myself Misspelled, her new record is a poignant reflection on love in all its forms; romantic, platonic – and the hardest type to articulate and master – self love.

Brimheim – a name chosen as a homage to her roots in the Faroe Islands, translating as “home of the breaking waves” – worked alongside producer Søren Buhl Lassen to create the sublime sounds on her new record, which she mined from a “deep depression hole” during a global pandemic. Despite the raw and confessional nature of her music, the record is peppered with self-effacing humour and a strong sense of self-awareness, proving that even in the darkest moments of isolation, there’s still room for light and laughter, even if it is occasionally through gritted teeth.

Moving between the boundaries of alt-pop, grunge, shoegaze and electronic music, can’t hate myself into a different shape is an intense, brooding listen. “I have noticed that I am see through” Brimheim observes on the opening track ‘heaven help me i’ve gone crazy’, a frank but gentle expression of what it feels like to “pick at the edges” of yourself when your emotions have been muted by depression. What follows is a beautifully bruising unravelling of vulnerability, with title track ‘can’t hate myself into a different shape’ setting the emotionally resilient tone that permeates the record.

Whether it’s her soft plea for reassurance that she’s not “a burden” on ‘baleen feeder’ (a nod to the filter-feeding system inside the mouths of baleen whales), her disarming reflection on unconditional love for her wife on the atmospheric ‘lonely is beauty’ – “She is all I could need / Everyone else / Makes me feel lonely” – or a nostalgic ode to teenage friendship on ‘hey amanda’, Brimheim is a master at capturing a moment in its purest form. The exquisite, shadowy majesty of ‘poison fizzing on a tongue’ is a superb example of this, and further proof of her skill for transforming self-flagellation – “When I am finished resisting myself / I will be beaten senseless” – into poetic, exhilarating music.

The rawness of her lyrics on ‘straight into traffic’ are punctuated by fluctuating keys, as she resists the urge to give into thoughts of self harm, ending on a note of genuine hope: “Don’t give in, love / You’re more than enough.” On ‘this weeks laundry’ she extrapolates on the painful, yet absurdly relatable need to keep up appearances by “putting on foundation” for a “trip across the street” to disguise the fact you’re barely able to function. Brimheim pulls herself back from the brink each time, and even on the masochistically titled closing track ‘hurting me for fun’ – where she is pulling herself up “by my hair” – her self-effacing tendencies blossom into acute and astoundingly accurate observations of the effects these emotions can have on the human condition.

“I felt like I’d been in this black muddy place, not able to see anything and kind of drowning,” Brimheim revealed to us in an interview about creating the songs that formed can’t hate myself into a different shape. Carving her own path out of a deeply vulnerable state, she has managed to craft a stirring, intricately observed collection of life-affirming songs that chime with relatable melancholy, and that will undoubtedly provide comfort for listeners who may be living through a similar experience.

Brimheim’s debut album can’t hate myself into a different shape is released via W.A.S. Entertainment on 28th January. Pre-order your copy here

Follow Brimheim on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook

Photo Credit: Hey Jack

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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INTERVIEW: Brimheim

“I am going to be completely honest with you” sings Danish-Faroese artist Brimheim on the opening to her exquisitely tender track ‘favorite day of the week‘. It’s a simple statement, but she delivers it with startling conviction through her crystalline vocals and considered instrumentation. It’s this candid, but tentative approach to creating music that makes listening to her debut album, can’t hate myself into a different shape, such a cathartic and rewarding experience. Set for release on the 28th January, it’s a poignant reflection on love in all its forms; romantic, platonic – and perhaps the hardest love to articulate – self love.

Brimheim – a name chosen as a homage to her roots in the Faroe Islands, translating as “home of the breaking waves” – worked alongside producer Søren Buhl Lassen to create the sublime sounds on her new record, which blossomed from a place of deep personal pain during a global pandemic. Despite the raw and confessional aesthetic of her music, when I meet her via Zoom she is in good spirits, laughing throughout the interview at her own Aquarian personality traits and willingly fan-girling over Avril Lavigne with me. We speak about her musical origins, her favourite tracks on her upcoming record, and what it’s like to transform moments of darkness into pure and palpable joy…

 

What are your earliest memories of music, and can you remember who or what first inspired you to start making your own?

My mum is a musician and she had a home recording studio in the apartment I grew up in, so ever since I was little I’ve been singing and writing little children’s songs of my own. But it wasn’t until I discovered our queen Avril Lavigne when I was 12 years old, when I saw the ‘Complicated’ music video on a Danish music TV programme that I was like, “oh my god, is this allowed? Is this a way to be?”

She was on a skateboard and she was playing the guitar, goofing around with her friends who were all boys. It was one of those “I’m not like the other girls” bullshit moments, you know? – but as a young girl, that spoke to me. That was kind of my gateway drug into thinking a little bit more about how I could do music, how could I do that and make it my own. I have diary entries from the time where I was like, “I want to go to New York City and become a big rock star!”

My Mum has always been incredibly supportive. She bought a guitar for me and I learned three chords and then I was like, “Okay, that’s all I need, I don’t want to like practice this crap, I just want to write songs and stand on that stage already!” So yeah, that’s kind of how it happened.

Your video for your single ‘hey amanda’ is quite Avril Lavigne-esque. When I first saw it, I was concentrating on the fact that you have two members of Baby In Vain in the band with you, but now you’ve mentioned Avril, the video makes so much more sense to me. Tell me all about it…

Totally, that was definitely an inspiration. It was so fun to film because usually I’m a solo act, so most of the stuff that I do with press and with music videos is all just me. I was really stoked that they (Baby In Vain) were in it, they’re my live band and my dear friends, so when I asked them “would you be up for just goofing around and having a good time on camera?” they were up for it. Usually I don’t get to do that with people.

The video for my other single ‘poison fizzing on a tongue’ is a lot more ambitious and probably more my vibe, but I wanted to do something that was light and that showcased the other end of the spectrum with ‘hey amanda’. I don’t want to really lock myself into “everything needs to be dark and gothy,” I’d like to be able to to express all of those different things. And some things can just be for shits and giggs!

You wrote ‘hey amanda’ as an ode to your friend and a celebration of platonic love. How did Amanda react when she first heard the song?

Amanda moved to Montreal five or six years ago, so we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like. We call each other often and we send stuff back and forth so we have a long distance friendship. I’d sent her the the initial demo of the song and I didn’t get a reply.

I just spiralled. I was like, “oh, no, oh no no, what did I do? Did I just totally offend her? Was it too private?” Then I started getting a little annoyed, like, “how can she be offended about this?” already having the argument in my head…but it turns out she just hadn’t seen the attachment. When she heard it she cried. She never really posts anything on social media, but she posted such nice things about it. It was really precious. I’m glad she felt it, because I’m really proud of the song and I mean every word of it.

Let’s talk about your album as a whole, can’t hate myself into a different shape. It feels like you’ve transformed experiences of feeling really vulnerable into something that sounds really beautiful and atmospheric.

You explore themes of romantic love, platonic love, and coming to terms with trying to love yourself as well. Was it a cathartic record to write? Because it’s definitely a cathartic record to listen to.

First of all, thank you very much. I feel very seen. It was a split experience, I’d say. I was deep in a depression hole in the whole latter part of of 2020, and that’s when I actually kind of launched my career and tried to go pro with this music thing that I had been trying to do my whole life.

I’d had a lot of attention and hype in Denmark and the Faroe Islands especially, way more than I had expected. I was in a really good place with my wife – she’s American and I’m Danish, so we had immigration difficulties – but all of that was kind of landing in nice places and my career was going well. Then, of course, the external factors of a pandemic shutting everything down just made me really fucking depressed. I was struggling a lot and feeling super overwhelmed and unable to cope with my own feelings. This is something that I’ve experienced often in my life, and probably will again, but this was a long stretch of time that it lasted.

I attempted to write songs while I was feeling like shit and had no energy, and it ended up just being very small snippets that I recorded on my phone with my guitar. Small ideas to set the bar for success really, really low for having been creative that day. Then I booked time in the studio with Søren Buhl, who produced the record with me. I hadn’t really worked with him before, I didn’t really know him, so I was nervous about it. I felt like I wasn’t really prepared enough because the things I had were so bare bones and such small ideas. But it turns out that our chemistry and our tastes were super aligned and it was kind of a blessing that the little kernels I had were so open ended, because that made that second part of the process of me and him working together in the studio super cathartic.

I felt like I’d been in this black muddy place, not able to see anything and kind of drowning, and then I slowly started emerging from that through this process of transforming these ideas into arrangements and recorded music with a structure. It was so life affirming. Again, because I am a solo artist, there can be a lot of self doubt and suffering involved! But this was the first time I’ve worked with anybody where it just was easy. So from those little ideas that I brought into the studio, that whole process of transforming them into a finished record took only about eight months, which is outrageously fast. That makes me really excited also to release it, because it still feels super fresh and relevant for me. It took me three years to record and release my debut EP, which is just five songs. But this record just feels really relevant still for me.

Do you have a favourite track on the record? Or does it change all the time?

I think it changes, but I really love the title track which is the second song on the album. For me it sums up what I’m trying to say and I think it was the first song we worked on after we decided we were going to make a record.

I think ‘poison fizzing on a tongue’ might be my favourite track. I feel like I could listen to it every day and still find something new I haven’t heard before.

Thank you! We made ‘poison’ in the second session in the studio. That was the moment I realised “okay, something really special is going on here.” It kind of came together as it sounds. It just happened in four hours and it sounded like that. I was like, “Oh my God, what just happened? This is amazing!” Especially after I’d been in such a depressive state where I’m like “I’m a piece of shit, everything sucks, I suck” and then being like “this is actually super cool!” that was a good feeling.

That sounds like good affirmation. Do you think that music, whether it’s the music you’re writing or the music you’re listening to, is a good way of understanding or moving past that headspace?

For sure. I discovered with this particular round on the depression carousel that I almost didn’t want to listen to music though, because it made me feel stuff. But that also speaks to the power of it, right? I didn’t want to feel anything, or maybe I did? But it felt very vulnerable to feel stuff. Now I’ve discovered that having someone to bounce energy and ideas off of in the studio is incredibly healing.

It sounds like a symbiotic relationship with Søren Buhl?

I can be kind of an Aquarius about things, I can be a little bit closed off to talking about super personal stuff – I do that through my music, that’s where I have my outlet. I can have a little bit of a distance towards people at first, because you know, you don’t want to overwhelm them with your shit! So it was pretty late that I sort of confessed to Søren how very, very special for me and incredibly healing this experience was. I was like “this is one of my favourite things I’ve ever done in my life, you’re one of my favourite people, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that because we just work together,” but luckily he felt the same, which I was so proud of because he works was with a lot of incredibly talented Danish artists.

What would you say you’re most proud of about this particular record?

I think that I managed to turn off any kind of inner critic. You know, the bad mob inside your head that says “no, it’s not this enough, it’s not that enough…” I was very much just saying yes to whatever ideas felt right. I think that really shines through and I think that it sounds really free.

What are your plans for performing the record live in 2022? I know Covid-19 restrictions are different in each country at the moment…

You know, launching a music career in the middle of a pandemic, it felt like something was missing because I couldn’t really tour my EP. But then in the summer things opened up, and I got to play a lot of Danish festivals and that was a great experience. It was stressful, because everything had to be booked in such a short time, it felt a little bit chaotic, but it was a really, really, really nice feeling to get to play the songs live to people who were really grateful to be at festivals again.

Then I had my first headliner tour of the major Danish cities in December, and I got to play two of them before the big finale show in Copenhagen got cancelled. That was a hard one to swallow. But I’m going to tour a bunch of Danish satellite towns in February and March. I’m also going to the Faroe Islands to have my first headline show there.

I’m trying to just let myself be excited about it, but it’s hard after everything that’s happened. So many concerts have been postponed that I got tickets for ages ago. So while I’m doing the tour, I have all these great shows to fit in between. It’ll be a wild few months.

Finally, we always ask artists to recommend another band or artist that they’ve been listening to recently. Is there anyone you’d like to give a shout out to?

A pretty cool thing that happened, at least for my music listening habits during the pandemic, was that I started listening to a lot more local music. The energy was more focused, even in the media, with what was going on locally. A bunch of really, really cool stuff from from the Faroe Islands and Copenhagen has caught my attention way more than maybe it would have before. One of my favourites is eee gee. It’s very retro-pop, vulnerable but still sassy, with sort of a 60s tinge to it, but not overtly, so it still sounds modern. I’ve been really obsessed with this one song ‘killing it’.

And then, of course, my labelmate Greta. We have sort of had parallel paths for the last few years. We met nine years ago and we studied song-writing together and now we have the same manager too. She’s released some some new singles that are like ABBA-meets-Kate Bush-meets-Berlin-90s-rave. It’s really, really cool. She became a mum in the middle of everything too and I especially like how she marketed her record with her big pregnant belly alongside this kind of Berlin techno music, I was like *chef’s kiss* this is great!

Pre-order Brimheim’s new album, can’t hate myself into a different shape, here

Follow Brimheim on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram & Facebook

Photo Credit: Hey Jack

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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INTERVIEW: Sian O’Gorman (NYX Drone Choir)

We first discovered the idiosyncratic sounds of the NYX Drone Choir in 2018, when they performed a live collaboration with Gazelle Twin at London’s Oval Space. Harnessing the collective power of the female voice and distorting it with the use of electronics, mics and software, the choir – who are musically directed by New Zealand-born Sian O’Gorman – create captivating soundscapes that enrapture the senses and push the boundaries of what a conventional choral performance can be.

Their latest project is a Remix EP of their own track ‘Mutualism‘ featuring MA.MOYO, released via their own label NYX Collective. The EP features contributions from Anna Wall, Deena Abdelwahed, LCY and Sian, with each re-working attributed to one of the four natural elements. The single and EP aim to “look at our relationship with nature, symbiosis transformation and collective consciousness.”

We caught up with Sian to talk about the Mutualism project, her route to becoming the choir’s director, the immense power and opportunity that collaboration has brought into her life, and creating & performing Deep England alongside Gazelle Twin…

Hello Sian! Can you remember who or what first inspired you to start singing and creating music?

This is embarrassing, but I was definitely one of those children who was always like “I’m going to do a show, everybody gather round!” I was always very into singing and performing, that was always a big love of mine. I grew up singing in opera choruses when I was a little girl and then started singing in a couple of national choirs in New Zealand. I then studied classical singing at university and I completely screwed it up a bit, to be honest. It made me realise I didn’t want to become a classical singer. I wasn’t really connecting with the music or the people. I really enjoyed the technical side of it, but I really struggled because it just wasn’t my kind of music. I was more into alternative or contemporary classical. I also loved singers like Bjork, PJ Harvey and slightly more left-field stuff when I was younger, so that definitely drew me in to starting to create music that was a little bit different.

I don’t think you “screwed up” at university. You didn’t follow a “traditional” route perhaps, but look where that’s lead you – you now direct the NYX drone choir! Tell me how you first came to meet the women that you formed it with…

I’ve always loved harmonising. Even as a little kid, I remember singing along to the radio and I loved singing with other people. I think through the classical route, apart from the choirs that I sang in which were always really inspirational, the solo singing at university became a lot more intellectual and it got very competitive and egotistical, so I just broke away from that. I started to get a lot more into yoga and meditation, plant medicines, retreats and things, and I really started really expanding my mind out. Through that, I realised the reason why I loved singing so much was because of the celebratory aspect of it, being with other human beings and using your voices together. The power that all these individual could voices feed in and create this amazing synergetic explosion of sound that was so much more than the sum of their individual parts.

Before I started up NYX, I was getting really heavily into more ambient music, using my voice and layering it on top of itself, and I thought to myself “wouldn’t it be amazing to have a group of women, all standing in a circle, creating a sound bath, using the power electronics to assist and maintain that kind of drone sound?” That was the initial idea. So NYX started out as me just jamming with a couple of friends. Then I talked to my friend Phillipa about it, who is an amazing creative producer and fundraiser. She just makes things happen. She was working on Convergence Festival with Josh at the time, and they said they wanted to do another project together, and he was really interested in the idea as well. So the three of us started producing and bringing everyone else together.

It sounds like the perfect meeting of minds. You’ve achieved so much together since then, including releasing this Mutualism remix EP through your own label, NYX Collective. Talk me through the idea behind original track, the inspiration for the EP and how it all came together…

The concept for ‘Mutualism’ was kind of just a seed of an idea a few years ago, and now it’s grown into a tree, and the branches of that tree are reaching out everywhere. It started taking shape around the first lockdown – because that’s how we describe the timings of things now. I wanted to create a project that involved all of the members of NYX, but it was also kind of technical experiment that we could all do remotely. I wanted to get everybody really good at recording at home, experimenting at home, and passing things on to each other.

At the same time, I was also really starting to get massively blown away by the division and the way people were communicating with each other in lockdown, especially the way we were seeing the world, our friends and our communities play out, which seemed to be on social media a lot of the time. I was overwhelmed with this narrative of fear that was dividing people, so I really wanted to create a piece that questioned how we could repair this relationship with ourselves and with each other, which to me, is also the relationship that we all have towards the planet. I know that sounds a bit cheesy, but I really do see the connection when people disconnect with the earth, they also disconnect with others and then with themselves.

So, I introduced these concepts to Belinda Zhawi, who’s artist name is MA.MOYO. She actually opened for us at Oval Space back in 2018. I’d always wanted to create a piece with her because I was so moved by her spoken word. Every time I’d seen her, my whole heart would just explode with the magnificence of the way that she crafts words. I then spoke to our core team, which includes visual artist Nick Cobby, our movement director Imogen and our sound associate Peter Rice. Together, we came up with this concept of “mutualism” which I interpret as mutual dependence on one another. It’s not a desperate type of dependence, it’s a real true trusting connection between people, between animals, between creatures, between plants. It’s a true supporting of one another and a finding of the middle ground.

We brainstormed a few things and we came up with some images, videos and text that connected with these idea. We had the image of Marina Abramović for her Rest Energy piece, where she’s holding a bow and arrow with her partner Ulay, and we had some amazing videos of nature as well. I then made a heartbeat-type of noise that I sent to Belinda to get a tempo from her. Then she laid down this poem in response to those images and sounds, which I passed on to all of the NYX singers. They each went away for a couple of weeks and just responded to that poetry and those images. One of the girls went into a bunker in the middle of Devon and recorded this amazing stuff with crystal glasses, singing into the earth and a cave. One of the girls sat with an organ and a clarinet, and other people involved were gathering field recordings from all over. So, I took all of the recordings that everybody had made, which as you can imagine, was hours and hours and hours of stuff. I sifted through it all and I picked out pieces from a number of different contributors, and I began to piece the music together with the poetry, and then I got my friend Dave who is an amazing saxophone player to feed in some more sex layers towards the end.

So once the initial track ‘Mutualism’ was completed, we exclusively launched it along with the interactive 360° video that Nick shot at Rewire Festival in April. With this particular track though, we knew from the beginning that we really wanted to remix it. That also really fitted into this idea of wanting to keep passing things on and re-evolving. We managed to secure funding from PRS for their Women Make Music fund. With that, we basically pitched that we wanted to create an EP of remixes from female and non-binary identifying people, and create an evolution of this piece. We have a massive list of people who we already love working with, so we passed it out to people who we thought would like to get involved. Working with LCY was such a joyous experience. They responded so well, so did the amazing Deena Abdelwahed, and our beautiful friend Anna Wall, who also opened for us at the Oval Space performance in 2018.

We didn’t really define what we wanted from them, we were just like “we know that you know yourselves, we really want you to go crazy with how you interpret this.” I also wanted to do a remix because I’d been working on these stems so much, I really wanted to play around with the choral stuff at the end. So we all created these pieces and when everybody started sending them back, I heard them, and I was like, “wow, these seem to personify all of the natural elements Belinda is talking about in the piece.” Re-mixing the tracks to represent a certain element wasn’t in the original commission. It wasn’t even an idea until I heard all the pieces together, so we ended up naming them after the four elements after that.

I think that’s such a wonderful achievement, to let everyone bring their own ideas to the piece, then simultaneously find a theme that unifies each of the different works. Surely that’s the perfect type of collaboration?

What do you personally think makes for a collaboration as strong as this? Do you think it’s just like-minded people working together, or do you think there’s something else in it as well?

That’s such a good question. I often just sit and ponder this. I don’t know what it is, but every single person we work with, is just fucking awesome. We work with such a diverse range of people from all different worlds – I mean, even our lawyer is such a good dude and our accountants are lovely people! That’s a pretty collaborative process too.

I think for me, collaboration is listening. It’s listening to each other, hearing what you can offer, hearing what others can offer and meeting in the middle. It really is like the lyrics to ‘Mutualism’ – “meet me in the middle”. I mean, it’s the nature of a choir to be very collaborative anyway, but the way in which we run NYX projects is very open. It just really feels like everyone that we collaborate with instantly feels like they’re a part of the family and part of something. So I guess collaborating is about recognising and celebrating people’s differences, celebrating the uniqueness of everyone.

That’s a really lovely way of describing it. I remember reading something that Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz) said after she worked with NYX on your collaborative album, Deep England. I’m paraphrasing here, but she mentioned that she usually prefers to work solo and shies away from collaboration, but working with NYX was beautiful because you all shared and enhanced the same vision.

As a huge fan of the work you all did on Deep England – I was blown away by your live performance at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2019 – can you talk me through some of the highlights of working on this project with Elizabeth?

Of course, thank you so much for your support! When we first started NYX, we already knew we really wanted to collaborate with female and non-binary electronic musicians. Particularly because we had friends in that world and they often talked about how lonely it was, and how isolating it can be. I had loved Gazelle Twin for years, and years, and years. She was absolutely at the top of my list for collaborating. We sent a pitch out to her and straight away, she said yes. We’d never even met her, but as soon as we had this talk with her on the phone with her and her manager Steve, we instantly had this great connection.

When I initially approached her, I’d already had ideas about her existing work and how I could interpret it. I’d gone through her old album Unflesh and chosen pieces that I thought could work, but she said she was about to release a new album called Pastoral. She mentioned that it was based on British paganism and folklore with some existing choral elements, so she sent it to me and I immediately thought “this is going to be great.” This is already a piece of genius in itself, and I can see how NYX can expand this out.

Elizabeth is a master of disguise through creating these characters on each of her albums, so I had no idea how technically insane her voice was when it came to singing. When she first came into the room with us, we all did an acoustic vocal warm-up together, and I think a lot of us were just like – “wow” – she’s phenomenal. She’s a joy to work with, because there’s just such a lack of egotism. Along with her manager Steve, they both supported our idea to release the Deep England album on NYX’s own label. They were great at mentoring us through that.

Elizabeth just has this really fantastic kind of emotional strength, but also this kind of beautiful giggly side to her as well. I think we all just enjoyed working together so much that after the Oval Space show in 2018, we realised we wanted to perform together again so we took it to Southbank Centre, and then we found some funding so we could record an album. We recorded Deep England in a day and a half actually. We co-produced it with Marta Salogni, who’s the most amazing engineer. It just felt like the most magical team of people working together, which just gives evidence to the fact that you can really create something magical when you pass it over to the collective and look beyond yourself. It’s really special and I’m so happy with how many people have heard that album, and how many people really, really enjoy it.

Huge thanks to Sian for answering our questions!

Listen to NYX’s remix EP for Mutualism on bandcamp below or on Spotify

Follow NYX on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, X & Facebook

Kate Crudgington
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Track Of The Day: Pearly – ‘Julianne Moore’

A heavy, tongue-in-cheek guitar tune inspired by Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 film Boogie Nights, Ohio-based trio Pearly have shared their latest single ‘Julianne Moore’. Released via Eto Ano Records who the band have recently signed to, the track is a fuzzy, distorted ode to Moore’s performance in the 90s comedy-drama, full of crashing cymbals, thrashing riffs and brooding vocals.

Formed of Josie Yeager, Austyn Benyak and Dalton Edwards, Pearly are inspired by an eclectic range of influences, including the films of David Lynch and the music of TOPS and Nine Inch Nails. Together, they create a mixture of soft indie rock tunes and swaggering, aggressive dance rock, with new single ‘Julianne Moore’ falling into the latter of the two categories. A bold, brash mix of noise that builds to a manic, metal-inspired breakdown, the track was penned as a carefree anecdote on creating music with a sense of fun, instead of solemnity.

“This song and who we are as people is [about] being tacky and not taking ourselves too seriously,” guitarist Austyn explains. “We all like it, and most importantly, we can dance to it.” Injecting a sense of frivolity into their heavy, swirling tune, Pearly have blended their dramatic tendencies with their ordinary desire to cut loose and enjoy life’s more playful moments.

Listen to ‘Julianne Moore’ below.

Follow Pearly on bandcamp, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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