Amanda Mair :: "Doubt"

There is first the girl. Then, there is what people say about her. Last, there arises some vaguely Hegelian synthesis, a tacking jag between these two tangents. Bursting on to the scene last spring with the inspired single, "House", Amanda Mair garnered as much attention for her music as she did for her age. She was - and is still - just 16 years old. Perhaps her age shouldn't have mattered, the secondary option of journalistic focus being her uncanny sonic resemblances to Kate Bush (it has been the Year of Kate Bush for, like, two years now). On latest single, "Doubt" one of only a few recorded tracks completed for our friends over at Labrador, Mair deals a slice of glittering and brittle pop. Her vocals are equal parts smokey and unobfuscated, asking unblinkingly in the bridge, "Will love destroy me?", a question that demands both blurred edges and hard lines. The chorus posits the vaguely tautological, "I wanna become what people become", a dangerous upward arrow and one Mair immediately denies with, "but I know I'll stay here." It is this expression of stasis that land us in the midst of galloping drums, heavenly synths and the voice of a girl that can't possibly be this good. These are the things that have nothing to do with age or another girl who wrote "Wuthering Heights" when she was only 17.

Listen :: Amanda Mair - "Doubt"