With muted, steely guitars, the new single from British-born, LA-based alt-pop artist Maisy Kay’s wears its heart on its sleeve from the beginning. Picking over the wreckage of a terminated relationship, Kay portrays herself as fragile, ‘Like a hummingbird trapped in a cage of porcelain’, and drinking again.
That muted guitar is gradually surrounded in a wrapping of deep bass and loose, textured percussion, much as Kay’s lyrics gradually strengthen her fragility with something resembling a skeletal strength. The chorus cements Kay’s position, overdubbed vocals reflecting an increasing stamina.
Bitter comes in at the point after a relationship where the determination to survive kicks in. Kay’s lyrics swing between a sense of heaviness, weighed by the lost hope of what a relationship could have been, and a resolve to heal and move on. Between a gradually building vocal and some deft instrumentation, Kay has created an emotive piece.
Born in Claverley in Shropshire, Maisy moved to Los Angeles at the young age of 16, the same year she won her first ASCAP award. She has since been gradually building her reputation as an indie pop artist. Check out her latest song, Bitter, below.
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