North East artist-to-watch Lizzie Esau channels anxiety and urgency into her new single “Impossible + Strange,” a spirited, emotionally charged indie rock firestorm that aches from the inside out.
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Stream: “Impossible + Strange” – Lizzie Esau
I’m a puppet on strings, I’m a bullet in a gun, I’m stuck in space and time if I’m not pushed along by anyone…
We’re barely halfway through January, and already Lizzie Esau’s spinning out.
Spinning out gloriously, we might add. It’s not every day we hear anxiety and overthinking expressed so vividly and viscerally through song, and that’s exactly what the English artist does on “Impossible + Strange,” a spirited, emotionally charged indie rock firestorm that aches from the inside out.
I was floating down a drain pipe
Down the side of my mind
Waiting for you
Been thinking of going full time
Wasting all my life as
I wait to call you
Mine, -ine, -ine, -ine…
Released January 12, 2024 via Yin Yang Media UK, “Impossible + Strange” is a raucous return from one of North East England’s most exhilarating singer/songwriters. Lizzie Esau’s first single of the year (and the follow-up to last July’s sophomore EP Deepest Blue) is an eruption of anticipation and exasperation; a dramatic and churning sonic upheaval borne from the emotional floods within.
“I was floating down a drain pipe, down the side of my mind, waiting for you,” Esau sings at the track’s start, slowly rising to a fever pitch as she sings hot on the mic, her voice full of yearning and desire.
She hits a chorus of ecstasy and raw, unfiltered energy, releasing all that built-up inner turmoil in a tumultuous waterfall of overdriven guitars and fiery vocals:
By a green light
I see you in line
Keeping cool in your mind
As I run out of mine
Mine, -ine, -ine, -ine…
For Esau, this song is at once a vessel of pain and passion.
“It explores the pain of waiting for something to happen that you desire so badly, so much so it makes you lose your mind. It’s about going down a rabbit hole in your own head, imagining different scenarios of how things could play out,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “The music reflects these lyrical ideas, with floaty and dreamy verses and explosive choruses, symbolising the antagonizing frustration of feeling powerless in your own life, building in raw anger and emotion as the song progresses.”
It explores the pain of waiting for something to happen that you desire so badly, so much so it makes you lose your mind. It’s about going down a rabbit hole in your own head…
I was standing at the bus stop
Waiting for a train
Tryna get to know you
Feels impossible and strange
But I’m going all the way
So someday I’ll call you
By a green light
I see you in line
Keeping cool in your mind
As I run out of mine
Esau worked on “Impossible + Strange” together with her longtime collaborator Steve Grainger, who also produced and mixed it. She credits having time to experiment with “a different kind of sound” and just messing around with chords as helping to see her vision through and bring this song to life. She sees this song as offering up a full spectrum of emotions – “delivering every colour, texture, and tone of pure energy and emotion in the space of 2 minutes, 58 seconds.”
Every second of “Impossible + Strange” is relentlessly and unapologetically intense: Esau doesn’t so much hold, as demand her audience’s attention from start to finish as she rages and roars against a tide that doesn’t want to come her way. The song’s haunting, heavy breakdown, which leads into its ending, proves a powerful and provocative climax:
This funny feeling
I can’t shake when I’m alone
I gеt the urge to ring you up
and scream it through the phone
But I’m a puppet on strings
I’m a bullet in a gun
I’m stuck in space and time
if I’m not pushed along by anyone
Wherever that rabbit hole in her own head leads, Lizzie Esau certainly dug deep and pulled out a banger.
From her feverish vocal performance and cathartic lyricism to the dynamic guitars, sweltering bass, and thunderous drums that surround her final screams, “Impossible + Strange” is undeniable, irresistible proof of the English singer/songwriter’s unparalleled talent. Fans of artists like Sam Fender, Wolf Alice, Lauran Hibberd, and girlhouse are sure to find heaps to love about Esau’s simultaneously vulnerable and visceral, over-the-top and unforgiving indie rock sound.
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