So Faint’s Hannah Georgas and Lyn Heinemann capture the intoxicating logic of an impossible crush on their standout debut single “Fully Slow,” where knowing the relationship exists mostly in your head does little to make the feelings less real.

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Stream: “Fully Slow” – So Faint

So Faint’s self-titled debut is immediately melodic, with hooks that reveal more detail the longer you sit with them.

Crunchy guitars and bright melodic turns meet subtly shifting time signatures, giving songs that initially seem straightforward little surprises around the edges. Hannah Georgas and Lyn Heinemann both have strong pop instincts, but their differences are what make the record interesting. Their voices are clearly distinguishable, and having two vocalists gives the songs another dimension. They can sound like two sides of the same conversation, particularly on songs where desire and uncertainty are already tangled together.

There’s also a rare perspective at the heart of So Faint. Georgas stayed in the ever-changing music industry, while Heinemann eventually left it to pursue a career in healthcare. Years later, they met back in the middle, bringing with them everything that had happened in the meantime. Heinemann was dealing with the sudden death of her best friend and the collapse of a long-term relationship, while Georgas wrote from her own experiences with partnership, depression, and doubt.

“Fully Slow,” released August 19 via Georgas’ own newly formed label Beetle Bomb Records, is one of the clearest examples of that push and pull between desire and uncertainty in action. Heinemann describes the duo’s debut single as being about wanting someone she knows deep down will never want her back, while continuing to fantasize that they might. She has said she is prone to intense crushes that remain completely internalized, to the point where she can “construct a full storyline” without ever doing anything about it.

“‘Fully Slow’ is about wanting someone who you know deep down will never want you back, but still fantasizing that they do. I’ve always been very prone to pointless intense crushes that remain completely internalized,” Heinemann explains. “I can construct a full storyline about what might happen and never do a single thing about it.”

The lyrics let us hear her doing just that.

“Go tell your man you don’t want him anymore,” she begins. It sounds like a command until “I wish you would” immediately reveals it as fantasy. That phrase keeps returning, and each repetition creates a little more distance between what she wants and what is actually happening. She can tell this person to leave their partner and imagine them taking her hand in front of their friends, but “I wish you would” keeps admitting that she has control over none of it.

Go tell your man
you don’t want him anymore
I wish you would,
I wish you would,
I wish you would

Come confidently take my hand
in front of all your friends
I wish you would,
I wish you would

What she wants, too, is to be loved publicly. Taking her hand “in front of all your friends” would make the relationship undeniable. For someone whose crush has existed almost entirely inside her own head, being seen together becomes part of the fantasy. She isn’t only imagining intimacy. She is imagining proof that the intimacy is real.

The song becomes more revealing when desire begins changing the way she sees herself. “You look at me like I’m f***ing made of gold,” she sings, before adding that it “lights me up like I am.” For a moment, someone else’s attention allows her to inhabit a more valuable version of herself. She responds by looking back as though she has “nothing to lose,” only to correct herself almost immediately: “Yeah I do but I wish I didn’t.” That small reversal punctures the confidence of the lines before it. She wants to surrender completely to the feeling, but she knows she can be hurt.

Then comes the song’s strangest contradiction. Heinemann asks whether they can remain “imaginary lovers” who “never f***” and “never touch.” After spending the song wishing this person would make the relationship real, she considers whether reality might damage what she has created. An imaginary lover can’t disappoint you or expose the distance between the person you invented and the person who actually exists. When she wants to “always be your best,” the fantasy also offers a way to preserve an idealized version of herself.

You look at me like I’m f***ing made of gold
and it lights me up like I am
I look at you like I’ve got nothing to lose
Yeah I do, but I wish I didn’t

And can we always stay the same
Imaginary lovers like
we won’t touch, we won’t f****
Can I always be the same for you
Imaginary lover like
you don’t know what’s next
So I can always be your best

She can’t leave it there. Soon she is imagining physical intimacy again, wanting to be pulled close and shown something this person has “never done for anyone.” Being wanted is no longer enough. She wants access to something nobody else has received, making exclusivity as important as intimacy. She doesn’t simply want this person to choose her. She wants their relationship to contain something that belongs only to them.

That makes “I wish you would” increasingly painful each time it comes back.

At first, the phrase sounds impatient and flirtatious. By the time Heinemann has imagined public affection and private intimacy, it has become a reminder that she is still standing exactly where she started. The fantasy keeps advancing while the actual relationship remains still.

Come on pull me close
and tell me what you want
I wish you would,
I wish you would,
I wish you would

Come on show me what
you’ve never done for anyone
I wish you would,
I wish you would

You look at me like you want to
tear it down baby, everything violently
I look at you like I’ve never known
the truth but I do now, I do

Even the title phrase changes the emotional temperature. “Get soft, get weak now / Fully slow” leaves behind the earlier fantasy of dramatic declarations for something more exposed. “See how I’m incomplete now” becomes particularly revealing beside the earlier image of being “made of gold.” The imagined attention briefly allows her to see herself through someone else’s admiring eyes. The deeper she goes into wanting that attention, the more clearly she exposes what she believes is missing without it.

Get soft, get weak now
Fully slow, the way you
give it up to me now
See how I’m incomplete now

That contradiction makes “Fully Slow” more interesting than a straightforward song about unrequited love. Heinemann knows she is inventing a relationship as she goes. The fantasy gives her somewhere to experience everything reality has withheld from her, but the song never lets her completely forget that she invented it. “I wish you would” is both the engine of the fantasy and the sentence that keeps breaking it.

Elsewhere on So Faint, Georgas and Heinemann bring that same awareness to the moments when life stops resembling what they expected. Heinemann’s grief and Georgas’s experiences with depression give the record a broader sense of plans being disrupted by feelings that refuse to behave conveniently. Knowing why you feel something rarely gives you the power to stop feeling it.

The album’s melodic warmth makes those subjects hit differently. Georgas and Heinemann can put painful admissions inside songs you want to replay immediately, and the contrast suits writing this self-aware. The record understands that adulthood rarely gives anyone a clean emotional storyline. You can grieve one person while wanting another or recognize your own destructive patterns while repeating them. You can know that a fantasy is impossible while continuing to furnish every room inside it.

The album also begins a new phase for Georgas, who is releasing the music through her own label.

After watching the process of releasing records change throughout her career, she wanted to assemble a team she trusted and create something more personal.

“I’ve been thinking about putting out music on my own label for a while. I’ve watched the way music gets released change so much since I first started out, and now so much of that process falls on the artist. For me, it felt exciting to build a team I really know and trust and create something that feels personal,” Georgas says. “At the end of the day, I just want to put this music out into the world. I’ve worked really hard on it with Lyn, and I’m excited for people to hear it.”

Georgas and Heinemann took different paths after their earlier years in music, but So Faint gave them a place to find that common thread again. “Fully Slow” captures one of the record’s most compelling ideas in miniature. Heinemann understands perfectly well that the story she has written for herself may never become real. Understanding it does nothing to diminish the desire. She keeps writing the story anyway.

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Stream: “Fully Slow” – So Faint

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 © Christine Reid

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