Laura Kerry
For nuanced emotional storytelling, synth pop is rarely the palette of choice. Its messages tend to stick to tropes such as declarations of love or straightforward tales of heartbreak, better for dancing than reflecting.
Under the songwriting and production of Elisa, though, synth pop expresses a wide and detailed array of feelings. In her new EP, Morning Again, her first release since 2015’s These Days, the artist uses shimmering synths and danceable beat loops to delve into her own psyche and beyond. On one level, the album is a collection of hook-filled tunes that are easy to fall into. On another, it is something to be considered and explored.
Morning Again begins with wordplay. The album and its title track refer to both “morning,” the time of day that signals new hope, and “mourning,” its sad homophone. According to Elisa, “Morning Again,” the song, is a response to the feeling that violence has saturated the news. The track, apparently written in one day, reacts to “another innocent life taken by police brutality, another woman victimized by toxic masculinity, another mass shooting.” Set against retro synths and a beat that borrows from disco, the content is particularly surprising—and is all the more effective because of that. Elisa’s voice is pretty as she sings, “Morning again in America / You better kiss your baby / Better get home safely for the night.” The only hints of ominousness in the music come in a low drone after the second chorus that leads into a surge of energy on the bridge. “Can you hear the sirens screaming?” she sings, her voice rising in what sounds like desperation.
For the remaining three tracks, Elisa mainly sticks to themes of personal grief and desire. In “You Can Wear The Mink”—a song that starts out slow and reflective, drops a dance-inducing beat, then takes a dark turn—the vocals continually return to a close, intimate sound, marked by the percussive “k” on the line “You can wear the mink.” Though the images never settle into a clear narrative, the song is evocative. In “Awake,” a soft and fluid verses give way to an anthemic chorus, led by the soulful line, “We all want to feel safe,” the last two words ringing out in echoed repetition. In “Can’t Work For Love,” Elisa spins a tale about a failed relationship through religious imagery and instrumentation that pulses darkly. In the delightfully strange and catchy second half of the chorus, she simply sings a wicked round of the syllable “ha.”
At first a familiar pastiche of ‘80s synths and pop songstress vocals, Morning Again reveals itself to be much more surreal and intimate. Drawing on the darker parts of her experience, Elisa makes fantastical tunes that rescue the listener from their own.