Aura by Mirella EP Review
9/10
Honest breathtaking indie folk/rock music that taps into the pit of your stomach and puts a gripping ache into your heart that you never want to let go.
It starts out with Twentysomething, a masterpiece of emotional turmoil that encapsulates that time period in your life where “some things don’t last”; boasting how “heartbreak gets a bad wrap”, while beating away at the drums in an abandoned fashion and layering so much altogether it overwhelms the senses. This song simulates the sensory overload that is your twenties; all the pain and hope smashed together in an ultraviolet collision of unrelenting drums, longing guitar, and barefaced vocals.
Strawberry Moon starts out with this classic slow-dance beat under softer vocals, backed up with ethereal background vocals and various little sound effects. It is slow and the lyrics are simple and straight-forward to begin with, but it quietly proclaims such feeling; then a vocal build-up leads to this incredible saxophone part, into another longing bittersweet guitar moment, and ending in an almost disjointed fashion marked by cacophonous drawn-out notes.
Glowing’s shining moment is two-thirds of the way through when the vocals become absolutely untethered; the affect is so visceral you feel it in your bones.
FCO(JFK) is the auditory equivalent of a found footage film spliced together out of non-sequitur pieces, like one might find at an abstract art exhibition; sporadic sound effects, sampling, distortion, and personal touches to bring it back into this realm of being from time to time.
They end the EP on the acoustic guitar grounded Can You Feel My Fear?; another relentlessly honest song that reaches out with all it’s mite across the ether to wake you up. There are so many defining lines throughout the album, but this song is full of them; here’s one: “you say you read auras now, can you feel my fear pouring out? can you see all my flaws now?".
The measured abandon with which this band performs, vocally and instrumentally, makes each song an adventure to listen to even if it’s the seventeenth time around already. Highly highly recommend this EP.
RIYL: Lord Huron, Jadu Heart, Snarls, Beach Bunny
https://open.spotify.com/album/5v4IROvDbZV7CTfeOHk3h8?si=xDn_f1WCQFaE35zAIt27og
https://mirella.bandcamp.com/releases
https://www.instagram.com/mirella.bk/?hl=en
