Your brain is a lousy roommate. It never pays rent, eats all your snacks, and is remarkably adept at reminding you of that one thing you did in 2014 at the worst possible time… right when you’re trying to sleep.
That internal babbling, meanwhile? That’s the core of Nellie Feldmann‘s latest project, When The World Goes Quiet, a 6-track EP exploring themes of anxiety and insecurity, dating, memory, and the complications that come with having too much time to think.
The singer-songwriter and session musician from Brighton writes in the space between acoustic indie and bedroom pop, preferring less-flashy arrangements so the focus remains on the songs themselves. But this is not a collection of six pieces of pensive acoustic music gazing wistfully out of a rainy window. Feldmann makes all six feel a little different, however, so the six-track collection moves along even when subject matter gets darker.
“Giving It All” begins with a nod to Feldmann’s younger self and the struggles she faced in the classroom. With an acoustic-driven underpinning that grounds the song and keeps it unfiltered, and vocal melodies that suggest someone is trying to process an experience they can’t quite understand, she refrains from assigning a moral to her tale. She leaves a little bit of her anger in the song.
That frustration hits home on “Turn Down My Shine,” which challenges the notion that silence translates to lack of interest or ineptitude. Songwise, it injects a healthy dose of swagger into the EP. The songwriting sharpens, and this song doesn’t so much feel like looking inward as it does like someone has just about had it with everything.
And then “Intrusive Thoughts” takes us into even darker depths. Feldmann drew from her own history of intrusive thoughts, which included a childhood full of crippling panic and anxiety episodes. The genius here is how the song never lets that very personal backstory seem remotely cheesy, and how the music itself was bare enough to enable the vocals to express honest fear without doing the most. And that makes it genuinely unsettling.
“No One Quite Like You” is another new vibe. This song was written about a former lover who helped develop Feldmann’s sense of style musically. It’s a smooth, love-based lullaby, not a vengeful break-up song, with a melody so warm that it’s like thumbing through a scrapbook of memories and remembering why you smiled, even if it didn’t last.
The laid-back sing-speak balances the closeness of the song with Feldmann’s signature bedroom-pop aesthetic, while the lo-fi production prevents the song from sinking into excessive schmaltz. It sounds less like, “God I know I shouldn’t keep dragging up the past, but I realize that I do this thing.”
Next is “Time Slips Away”, which takes personal anxiety and makes it colossal. Feldmann describes being locked in the marginal space between yesteryear and tomorrow, barely inhabiting the moment because one side of the brain is inundated with yesterday and the other with what could happen next. As an outro, it offers the EP a far-reaching conclusion.
Through all its music, When The World Goes Quiet knows when to let go. Acoustic instrumentation is the body, and bedroom-pop dusting adds a gentle atmosphere, but nothing at the expense of the melody. And Feldmann is aware that a six-track record can sit comfortably in various seats: some songs lean into serenity, others into uncomfortable moments, and some veer somewhere in between.
What the EP wins in its strengths is that its songwriting doesn’t try to solve the issues it talks about. There is no deus ex-machina waiting for us on the last track, no dull optimistic speech over high-pitched strings.
Just thoughts. Lots of them.
And unfortunately, they’re still talking when the music stops.
A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.
