Slow, steady, and gently Cora Flux guides listeners of their new single “Hold Me” into that good night. The track was reportedly recorded in Cora Flux’s Copenhagen bedroom, using the first take of passionate freeform vocals in the construction of a lo-fi grunge anthem to sore loneliness and the withdrawal symptoms of love. We hear resonant plucked bass and the hand sliding so tenderly along its neck, the subdued beats of a drum machine, and synths that bring a machine winding down to mind as the vocals freely lament about love slipping through even the tightest-gripped fingers to be lost to the sands of time.
Cora Flux’s lyrics ultimately betray the fact that this piece was improvised in the first take, from what I can manage to pick out by ear. While this does lend to a dreamlike incoherence at times, it also brings us poetic lines that one could spend hours dissecting and discussing should they have the perception to see its depth. While I found myself near-groggily nodding my head to the slow-dance beat of the intro, the line “dust floats like your name” hits me like a smack upside the head and reminds me of every time I stared through a sunbeam from the window at the dust particles floating by; it reminds me of the times I wished I could join those dead skin cells floating freely and aimlessly with no more concept of pain or harm. Cora Flux further invokes these moments of quiet pain hidden behind disassociation:
I bite on my tongue
my words come out all wrong
clock ticks through the floor
I don’t know what I’m here for
Hold me, hold me
It is here that I feel I must mention something important about the specific phenomenon Cora Flux writes about in “Hold Me”: When one experiences a breakup, there are famously pronounced mental and emotional symptoms in the months or even years to follow, but there are physical symptoms as well. Some compare this post-breakup state to grief, some compare it to withdrawal; I find myself in the latter camp, and from the lyrics to “Hold Me” alone, I believe the mind behind Cora Flux might share this opinion. In a way, the wound-down grungy sound of this track feels almost like the brainfog you get when you stop smoking cold turkey, or the pounding headache when the last bit of alcohol is finally purged from your blood. The world goes fuzzy, time moves slow, the wind always hits your face and never your back—there are moments approaching clarity, illustrated in the track by bright and crunchy electric guitar behind a surprisingly high-energy chorus, but it all falls back to the numbed buzzing pain in one’s core soon enough.
For those looking to inject their more moody late-night drive playlists with a track teetering between nostalgia and dread as far as love is concerned, consider adding and streaming Cora Flux’s “Hold Me” on Spotify. The music acts like a salve for the heart and a euphoric painkiller for the mind.
Written by Alexei Lee
