From the dynamic heart of Chicago, Melissa Harris, an artist of manifold virtuosities—spanning the realms of music-making, crooning, lyrical composition, and production—has graciously unveiled her latest aural endeavor. This tantalizing single, christened “Destroyer,” comes paired with a visual masterpiece and is an enchanting offering from her enigmatic and sonorously shadowy synth-pop venture, Born Days. This latest track serves as a prelude to the keenly awaited “My Little Dark,” set for release on October 6th.
The lyrics evoke a poignant sense of empowerment, resilience, and self-assertion against external forces. Initially, there is a feeling of claustrophobia, but an inner strength and resourcefulness emerges, likened to the Nerium Oleander—a beautiful, but toxic plant. This duality reflects both vulnerability and strength. As the song progresses, determination intensifies, asserting control over their life and defying the Destroyer’s influence. The imagery of honey suggests a seductive but slow-consuming danger. Amidst uncertainties of life and existence, the protagonist’s resolve remains unwavering, taking agency and command of their own destiny.
“When I go into my tiny recording space, it is cut off from the world with heavy sound blankets that block the light and the outside world; I finally feel safe, and I can explore my awareness and the fear that comes with that,”says Harris. “This song is about feeling like I couldn’t figure out how to continue living on this planet. At this time, I felt like my mind was pulling me to very dark places, my anxiety was becoming physically debilitating, and I didn’t know if I could exist in this world anymore. This song is about finding that dark energy, the feeling within you that tells you to conform and give up, and telling it to fuck off. Sometimes you find your way out of things only after you have found your way into the heart of them. I still struggle with this feeling though, but writing songs about it helps.”
The song comes with a visualizer, which you can watch below:
“My Little Dark” is a saga birthed from a journey spanning years and miles. Born Days, Harris’ experimental music persona since 2017, serves as her catharsis, a conduit to articulate her emotions, ruminate on past experiences, and heal from trauma’s labyrinth, seeking to reunite with the pristine innocence intrinsic to nature’s rhythm. The advent of Covid, however, cast a pall of silence on her creative process. Stricken by acute agoraphobia and crippling anxiety, Harris found herself imprisoned within her small, whisper-thin walled sanctuary in Chicago. The realization that her home studio was now unviable for recording dawned on her. As the city’s cacophony invaded every crevice of her recording space, she developed a heightened sensitivity to sounds, momentarily hindering her ability to record and mix her music. Unwilling to surrender to adversity, Harris packed her musical arsenal into her car, setting off on a spontaneous transcontinental drive. This journey led her to a secluded desert haven where she committed to relentless recording sessions, ten hours daily for three months, within a tiny closet-sized refuge.
The fruits of her labour, born between the Arizona sands and her Illinois home studio, feature Harris as the singular force behind the project – the lyricist, producer, vocalist, and instrumentalist maneuvering the guitar, bass, synths, and samplers. “My Little Dark” is a confession of vulnerability and emotional depth, a concept album that taps into the raw introspective poetry of Sylvia Plath and Dr. Seuss’s innocent charm. It weaves a mystical, sci-fi bildungsroman of a young woman battling her self-imposed psychological confines. Laden with mysticism and melancholy, Harris’s ethereal voice dissipates into shadowy symphonic expanses, propelled by dreamlike, synth-heavy polyrhythms. This constructs a cinematic electronic pop narrative imbued with moody, nebulous textures.
Preorder My Little Dark here.
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