REVIEW: ‘Will You Let Me Drown?’ by Ada Blue
Derbyshire indie artist Ada Blue explores vast sonic terrain on her new E.P. ‘Will You Let Me Drown?’, a genre-hopping journey through the worlds of alt-pop, indie and rock. Across six songs and two interludes, Ada explores love, relationships, and anxiety with distinctive insight and a deft ear for melody; each song working successfully in the space between relatability and specificity with considered, novelistic details.
Musically, there’s a really successful balance here between organic, almost Fleetwood Mac moments on a track like ‘Drown’ and electronic elements on a song like ‘I’m the Enemy’, which calls back to the synths of Melodrama-era Lorde (which is always a good thing, in my opinion). Even as different styles and genres are introduced (over the course of a single song in some cases), a sense of consistency in the songwriting and approach to melody really helps keep a sense of cohesion across the project. On a track like ‘The Feeling’, we get guitars from the world of Arctic Monkeys’ Humbug and AM, with confident vocal performances that sound like Ellie Roswell of Wolf Alice with Kate Bush on backing vocals. However, it’s still identifiably in the same world as the more relaxed grooves of ‘Bad Idea’ and ‘Thoughts out Loud’. The use of backing vocals too really helps tie the project together and allows it to carve out a strong sense of identity, these songs may at times be deadly serious in intent (and rightly so) but the sense of studio invention and experimentation in the production never really goes away.
It's possibly an unfashionable stance to take in the era of a playlist-based streaming landscape and auto-shuffled albums, but I think there’s a real art to properly using interludes. When done right, an artfully constructed interlude or interstitial moment between tracks really bring a collection of music together and lets it stand as a cohesive and complete statement, think ‘Facebook Story’ on Blonde or ‘DVD Menu’ on Punisher; a good interlude or instrumental piece expands the world of the music and gives context for the rest of the project. Which is what ‘blame (interlude)’ and ‘want (interlude)’ really achieve here, they place the songs they precede in a larger narrative. ‘blame’, with its rising volume of background chatter, introduces the “everyone-is-talking-about-me” fear almost all to realistically and ‘want’ sets notifications and keyboard sounds against a ghostly vocal arrangement, accurately capturing the experience of an absolute ghoul of a man haunting your inbox.
Lead single ‘Pornography’ is a clear stand out too. Even against such strong competition from the rest of the track list, Blue’s brutal examination of the hellscape that is dating men stands out for it’s confident paring of searing lyricism with accomplished pop melodies. It takes an incredibly strong chorus to make the lines “You only want pornography/ I’m only just pornography” sound like a breezy summer pop hit but that’s exactly what happens here; the musical equivalent of a fake smile adopted to conceal some truly devastating lyrics. Within the span of just over three minutes, the track morphs from Frank Ocean-esque synth soundscapes to the deceptively upbeat-sounding indie-pop chorus complete with backing vocals somewhere between Lilly Allen’s ‘F*ck You’ and the opening of Harry Styles’ ‘Cherry’ (which is a collaboration I didn’t know I needed to hear until I wrote this, but one that I absolutely do). Then, between the second and final chorus, the song’s morphs to meet its subject matter and builds into a confrontational, ascending bridge that feels as if it’s being sang directly to all the “little fools like you” that may be listening. A biting criticism of misogynistic expectations armed with an ultra-melodic chorus destined to get stuck in your head for days.
You can listen to ‘Will You Let Me Drown?’ by Ada Blue on Spotify here.
Words: Sam Wilkinson
