Listen: Pieces - JUJ

Long time readers may be aware that I don’t sleep well. There is a point in the night where it feels like there is no-one else in the world awake and that time could stop right there and then, and I would be alone forever, trapped with my worry and anxiety. Being alone in the night is one of the hardest things.

On Pieces, JUJ depicts her experience trying to deal with insomnia, having written the main hook at 4am one night when she couldn’t sleep. Things in the night can feel helpless and so crushingly lonely, and JUJ captures that feeling perfectly. When she asks for some piece for her mind, I can’t help but hope she got some.

Premiere: Just Friends - I Am Boleyn

Just Friends is the kind of record that bristles with the kind of emotion that moves with sharp edges. Vocals search for stable ground before seemingly slipping away in a wave of stuttering, wheezing synths and clattering drums. The whole thing creates a sense that the love it depicts could simply evaporate if anyone looks at it too closely. It's fragile, uncertain, nervous and beautiful.

This is the third single from I Am Boleyn, a musician who grew up in St Petersburg before moving to the UK to study History at Oxford University. She now divides her time between London and Stockholm, creating music as she goes, with influences that include Robyn, Mø, MS MR and Goldfrapp.

Depicting the fuzzy grey space that can exist in a relationship that feels somewhere between platonic and romantic, there is a sense of desire and pain that pulses through Just Friends... The fear that something will never happen, coupled with the terror that if it actually does, everything will change. Those tricky friendships can feel like a barbed trap we create - a new, inventive way to inflict pain upon ourselves. It’s dizzying and I feel a little sick, and yet here I am, reaching out to hold your hand...

Listen: Golden Ghosts - Elodie Rêverie

Having first appeared on BlackPlastic last month, Elodie Rêverie is back with her latest single, the appropriately spooky-titled Golden Ghosts.

The last song of Elodie’s I covered here was Skeleton Castle, a shimmering piece of pop music that glistened in a way that combined the crunch of grungy guitars with the glitter of disco. In contrast, Golden Ghosts waltzes along with a spectral and ever so slightly threatening sense of drama. Deliberately distancing herself from the electronic pop sound of her recent releases, Golden Ghosts was inspired by the feelings depicted in the Eagles’ Hotel California, but here the threat feels ever present.

Golden Ghosts is constructed from a piano introduction lifted from Standchën by Schubert, around which Elodie applies minimal production to leave us with something simply and yet impactful. It also reminds me of the melancholic sounds scapes used in Succession, my current TV obsession. There is an electric sense of power flowing through these sounds.

Check out Golden Ghosts below:

Listen: Thnk U - Frogi

Thnk U is the latest track from Chicago-raised, LA-based Frogi, and it comes ahead of her new EP, Introvert. It is also the kind of brutally honest and vulnerable song I can’t help but fall for, a song all about the experience of getting stronger because you have to:

“The song Thnk U was the first song I ever wrote for the project. I didn't know it at the time, but it was the song that started this whole adventure. It's a reflective song about the person or people in my life that have really challenged me or hurt me, and how it's molded me into a stronger, wiser, all around better person.”

Thnk U opens with a choral vocal harmony and, but for a gentle electronic chord acting as the track’s bed, it is nearly an a cappella performance. At first blush it feels like a delicate song about loss and moving on, Frogi acknowledging she hurt the subject of the song and it is clear there is a desire for closure. The chorus lays it out bare though - a plain spoken lyric creating the song’s focal moment and surprising with it’s bitterness, “Thank you for fucking me up, cause if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have to fight to get back up”.

As the song builds to its climax, the instrumentation gradually builds - a huge sounding but simple percussion line snaps with fury, and additional layers of vocals add the equivalent of a bass line and melodic atmospherics. Taken in as a whole, it’s an incredible sounding record, full of anger and strength and emotional resilience. Whilst there is anger and hurt here, there is also clearly growth and gratitude.

Check out Thnk U below, and find the full Introvert EP here.

Listen: Reintroduce Me To Your Body - Noa Spott

Reintroduce Me To Your Body is a leftfield piece of folksy pop music about looking for a chance to reconnect with a love, and the work of Philadelphia’s Noa Spott

With production that veers between gentle intimacy and moments of big, cinematic wonder. The song was written about a trip the artist, Noa Spott, took with his partner. Following the trip they spent a period of time away from one another, and the song is about the feeling of strange distance that can open up between two people that are usually so close when they are suddenly physically separated, as Spott explains:

“I wrote Reintroduce Me to Your Body reminiscing on a trip I took out west with my partner. We spent some time apart after the trip and talked about how strange it felt to be separated - almost feeling like we forgot how the other person was.”

Sometimes there is a weird whiplash type feeling, when someone you are usually close to suddenly isn’t there. What did it feel like to hold you close? And are you still real when I can’t feel your presence right here? There is a yearning here in the song, but it is combined with an optimistic feeling. I know you are still real, and we will be together soon enough...

Reintroduce Me To Your Body is Noa Spott’s second single and you can check it out below.

Let’s go out west next spring Let’s see what you and me see out there We can go to Idaho We can go to I don’t know and I don’t care It’s just been so long since you and me Could find some time to carelessly explore ourselves Hello stranger I’ve forgotten how it feels to be with you And oh baby Remind me of the things we used to do Reintroduce me to your body Reintroduce me to your body Let’s go to the western sea Let’s see the redwood trees and mountains We can take the scenic route We can take the I don’t know and I don’t care It’s just been awhile since you and me Could revel in our company and share ourselves Hello stranger I have a memory of me and you And oh baby Remind me of the things we used to do Reintroduce me to your body Reintroduce me to your body