There’s something inescapably autumnal about this foggy haze of a song – one that’s cloaked in a hushed melancholy that breathes softly at the song’s core. Barely strummed guitars are subtly augmented by wavering keys and the odd, distorted, distant beat crackling beneath the mix like a neighbour’s band’s practice seeping through the peeling walls.
Former Dakota lead vocalist, Lucy Brammer, has entered her self-appointed ‘sad girl’ era with this newly titled soapberry project – but this isn’t some po-faced miserabilist mood piece. Whilst undeniably melancholic, she has placed narrative at the song’s core to both self-questioning and elliptical effect. It’s an approach, though, that feels effortless – drawing you into its sea of fragmented images.
Brammer’s double-tracked vocals are beautifully delivered, and the surrounding production is careful, with subtle bass and shivering details permeating the misty atmospheres. As the song builds, the production becomes more all-enveloping and climactic- there is a wall of sound quality to the sonic landscape that relents only at its final moments, leaving the listener mildly bewildered. There is, too, the spectre of pop haunting the Baptist Church and a sort of jaded 90s sensibility that makes me think that this could have easily snuck into the closing credits of the teenage mainstay My So-Called Life.
Nostalgic, yearning and heartfelt – soapberry is a fading fog to fully fall into. Time to be submerged.
Written by M.A Welsh (Misophone)
