Music
BALLAD 1 (SORRY) is not a cry for help, but rather a resolute, resigned defeat. It speaks to the vast mental health emergency, whilst detailing HerOrangeCoat’s own personal journey with anxiety. Pencilled between counselling sessions, etched into her skin, the mournful track opens the EP with what feels like an inevitable end, but, somehow, we stumble on.
Mixed and mastered by Nikhil Shepherd. Album art photography by Kevin Donnelly.
BALLAD 2 (SKIN OFF MY BACK): Written to highlight the lack of safety for women, Ballad 2 (Skin Off My Back) is an intimate imagined account of the very real situation faced by many. These are the fears women and femme people live with daily, the potential situations we are forced to face, the legacy we are obligated to carry from mother to daughter.
Mixed and mastered by Nikhil Shepherd. Album art photography by Kevin Donnelly.
BALLAD 3 (JAMAICA '59) is my response to the anti-immigration rhetoric and policy that has dominated the UK news during my adult life, through the lens of my own simultaneous white privilege and my proximity to immigration. The song’s repetition of Jamaica ’59 is a reference to the year when my grandmother moved to England to become a nurse, leaving Jamaica behind.
Drums by Billy Dunn. Mixed and mastered by Nikhil Shepherd. Album art photography by Kevin Donnelly.
BALLAD 4 (SECOND NATURE) plays on the absurdism of the societal and political response to the climate crisis, or rather the lack of response.
Written around the heatwave of 2022, the song comes from an acute anger at the inaction of successive governments.
Mixed and mastered by Nikhil Shepherd. Album art photography by Kevin Donnelly.
POSTSCRIPT. This EP is about both personal issues and things I’ve become acutely aware of in my early twenties. It also speaks more broadly to these issues in wider society. It is in essence downbeat and melancholy. Postscript is a note to round this off, marking that, whilst things are difficult, it is much better to be aware of it all, that there can be power in this.
Mixed and mastered by Nikhil Shepherd. Album art photography by Kevin Donnelly.
THE DOG IS DEAD
A party, a book, and a fixation on death: these are both the subject and the inspiration of The Dog is Dead.
Drums by Danny Blackburn.
ANOTHER DAY TO HIDE
Anxiety and its impact on relationships is the main topic of Another Day to Hide. It encapsulates a sense of helplessness that comes with mental illness, and how the everyday becomes horrifying.
Drums by Danny Blackburn.
SLIDE DOWN
Slide Down discusses my obsessive love affair with music. It's a catchy song that begs to be played on repeat, just like the music that inspired it. Based on my tendency to listen to tracks on repeat for multiple hours, it describes the process of getting lost in a song with no desire to escape.
FINAL COMMENTS ON YOU
The Inconsistency of Sound is a gentle exploration of the changing soundscape of a relationship, from the precious first words spoken to the final and absolute absence of sound at the end. As the dust settles and experiences become distant memories, so too do these sounds recede from being, quietly slipping from present to past.
Born out of acceptance in the aftermath of a breakup, Rooted Flowers is a whimsical introspection, examining culpability and blame. Our experience is one-sided, but Rooted Flowers tries to take in the bigger picture and look beyond the simplicity of sadness to a more complex reality. In contemplating all this, the song takes the final step in letting go.
NOT A DAY
Lifted from my childhood songwriting and translated into my adult life.
