Ottilia :: "Heartless"

Ottilia is still one of the brightest young stars in independent music. Still a teenager, perhaps the best metric of this future success is the conspicuous disappearance of her most infectious track, "40 Million Light Years" from the Internet. This is the empty space that signals an arrival, a reverse dramatic irony where the people on stage know something profound that is hidden from the audience. The joke is on us. On latest demo, "Heartless," Ottilia pursues a more meditative aesthetic, channeling Lykke Li, Amanda Mair and others. The song muddles along under its own power, persuasive in its austerity and the central lyric of the chorus, "If I had a heart left to love you, I would do," one of those grammatically incorrect statements that holds a disjointed and terrible power.

Amanda Mair :: "Sense"

Amanda Mair represents a unique blend of precociousness and mercurial talent. After two fantastic one-off singles, "Doubt" and "House" where the Swede channeled Kate Bush and a blend of soaring, Gothic pop, Mair releases, "Sense" - still favoring one-word, five-letter titles - the first single from her upcoming self-titled, LP. On "Sense" the aesthetic values are freed from the rarefied and thin air of her previous work. This latest work represents a more organic and, at times, almost cute, Mair, perhaps appropriate for an artist that attracted the attention of the taste-making label Labrador last year at just 16 years old. If the melody feels a bit childish, even in places too precious, this is both natural and needed. Mair risked sounding a bit too old for herself last year, reduced down to something a bit more comprehensible for her debut record. Either way, "Sense" marks another impressive stroke of songwriting from the young talent and a harbinger of a great record to come.

Listen :: Amanda Mair - "Sense"
Listen :: Amanda Mair - "Doubt"
Listen :: Amanda Mair - "House"

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"

Amanda Mair :: "House"

It is both the year of Kate Bush and the year where an astute observer can rightly ask, "Can someone be inspired by Kate Bush if they were born in 1995?" New Labrador signee and one without a driver's license, 16 year old Amanda Mair spins a percocious and delicate web on first single, "House". What begins as a lilting, anti-lullabye shifts into higher gear, trading reverent hush for rolling drums, surging strings and a melody that easily could have cracked Bush's The Kick Inside in 1978. Of course, today Bush is preparing to release an album of remastered material, backed by a troubled single, "Deeper Understanding" which features a terrifying autotuned chorus and truly bizarre lyrical content addressing our intimacy with machines. Kate Bush isn't even Kate Bush anymore. Amanda Mair will carve out her own version of this legacy of big, orchestral pop, making it less the year of any of set of influences and more the year of whoever is bold enough to pick up and re-light the torches.

Listen :: Amanda Mair - "House"