Seductive, immersive, and utterly captivating, deary’s “The Moth” is a dark, dramatic dream pop feast for the senses – a sweaty haze that leaves its audience breathless, stunned, stirred, and soothed.
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I lost my way in the fire; I am a moth to the flame, dancing too close to desire to feel again…
A thick wall of sound engulfs the ears as deary spread their wings and take flight in “The Moth.”
The London duo soaked the air with gauzy and glistening dream pop music in last year’s debut EP, and their newest material is even more intense and all-consuming. Heavy, reverb-laden guitars swell, soar, and drone alongside pulsing drums and enchanting vocals. A sweaty haze washes over the senses in hot, dark waves that blot out the sun. It’s seductive, immersive, and utterly captivating: A feast for the mind, body, and soul that once again leaves us breathless – stunned, stirred, and soothed.
I lost my way in the fire
I am a moth to the flame
Dancing too close to desire
To feel again
You got me hypnotised
Frozen as you set my whole world alight
Feeding off the way you burn
You could be my universe
Released June 19th, “The Moth” is as beautiful as it is breathtaking. deary’s first new track of 2024 – the lead single off their upcoming sophomore EP, Aurelia (out November 1st via Sonic Cathedral) – finds the London-based duo of Ben Easton and Rebecca ‘Dottie’ Cockram further developing, expanding, and refining the shoegaze-influenced sonic palette they first introduced in 2023.
“With a lush sound that evokes the likes of Mazzy Star and Slowdive, deary have… established themselves as purveyors of the hypnotic, the lilting, the atmospheric, and the reverb-drenched,” Atwood Magazine wrote in an artist feature published this past January.
Aurelia is without a doubt an exhilarating evolution for the band, with “The Moth” and successive singles “Selene” and “The Drift” building out an intoxicating, enveloping musical world marked at once by darkness and light, movement and stillness, warmth and coolness. Into everything they make, the pair inject their own unfiltered, unabridged humanity – making these songs, each one a dizzying, dazzling rush, all the more compelling. Intimacy and vulnerability are but two hallmarks of Dottie Cockram’s songwriting; she pours her full self into her lyrics, as into her performance, resulting in music that seems to make time itself stand still.
“At first, I found it quite hard to write these lyrics,” Dottie Cockram tells Atwood Magazine. “I knew what I wanted to say, but sometimes the hardest thing about songwriting is condensing hundreds of ideas into a few lines. As soon as I wrote ‘I am a moth to the flame’ in my notebook, it sat so well, and the rest came flooding in. This image of a moth flying towards this light, the power in its wings, and its desire for this saviour, played in my mind.”
“I wanted to focus on that feeling of immortality and devotion. ‘You could be my universe.’ Throwing our hearts and bodies into a moment with no care for the outcome. We mostly know how it will end but it’s the human, the moth in us.”
I lost my way in the fire
I am a moth to the flame
Dancing too close to desire
To feel again
I wanted to write about being drawn to things which are not good for us. However, that fleeting feeling of immortality is too tempting to fly away from.
– Dottie Cockram, deary
As Cockram’s bandmate Ben Easton explains, deary actually approached this song with the intent of arresting the senses: Of drawing their audience in, quite like moths to proverbial flame.
“We had the desire to write something immediate that hooks you in,” he says, “and we were cautious not to alter a huge amount during the writing process, as we have done previously. Listening to the original version, the main skeleton was laid down from day one, but we embellished it along the way and waited for the right vocal melody and guitar sound to come along.”
“We focused a lot on the rhythm and syncopation of ‘The Moth’; counter melodies and off beat percussion, etc.,” he adds. “It’s very dense and immediate, with little room to breathe which adds to the claustrophobia in the subject matter. The anxiety within the sounds, mixed with the familiarity of a call and response vocal line and standard structure, creates this juxtaposition of comfort and paranoia that really adds to Dottie’s lyrics.”
The music video for “The Moth” is as spellbinding as the song itself; shot in the woods, the film features five actresses (Helena Brown, Grace Easton, Alexandra Wells, Natasha Wells, and Lara West) clad in white and engaging in a ritualistic ceremony.
“We had the pleasure of working with director Liam Beazley on the video, and decided to create a short film about someone breaking free from a mystical woodland cult,” deary share. “The result is incredible thanks to Liam and some friends and family who didn’t mind sacrificing their Sunday cavorting in the woods.”
Ultimately, “The Moth” is as fragile as it is fierce: An intensely smoldering, dark, ethereal, and dramatic fever dream that aches boldly and beautifully from the inside out. Stream deary’s lush dream pop reverie wherever you listen to music, and stay tuned for their sophomore EP Aurelia, out November 1st via Sonic Cathedral.
Heaven is in your eyes
Guided by angels in disguise
Ruby reigns over my worth
You could be my universe
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© Nat Easton
© Nat Easton
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