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about
Drawing from the canon of 2010s jangly guitar-centric pop and 1990s shoegaze, Maripool’s ‘Softly’ is a dream-pop anthem that ever-so-coolly confronts her dark inner turmoil. At once nihilistic and optimistic, dreamy yet rhythmical vocals respond to bright, bending guitars to create a driving and urgent track that exposes complex emotions, climaxing in a subtly euphoric chorus.
On the accompanying video, Maripool is followed around town by a jester who appears to torment her, until at the end of the video as Maripool is wiping blood away from her mouth, the jester appears in the toilet and posses Maripool as they laugh maniacally together.
On her inspiration for the single, Maripool explains: ‘This song was written as a form of exorcism, there’s an evil inside of me that needs to come out but in the end I decide to keep. In the music video that’s what I wanted to get across, as well. There’s an evil, which is portrayed as the jester, that follows me around but in the end I welcome it and come to terms with it.’
Maripool is the moniker of Lisbon-born, London based songwriter Natasha Simões, a self-described “one girl band” who works largely solo, writing and playing on her guitar-driven, bedroom-pop arrangements.
Upon moving to London at 18, Simões got a job at Whole Foods and bought a guitar with her first paycheck. Having never played music before she then spent most evenings teaching herself how to play the music of her heroes from the midwest emo scene.
Aged 21 she was ready to join a band, within which she started to feel confident playing guitar and writing songs. When that band split up Simões decided bands weren't for her so, in a very practical way, she got a drum kit from a friend, set it up in her room and started to learn it as well as bass. Slowly from there songs came to life and, not wanting to release under her own name, she needed a moniker. Inspired by the scene in The Simpsons when Milhouse starts to write on Bart’s cast, Simões adapted the gag to include the beginning of her middle name and Maripool was born.
Honing her craft in isolation, Simões would eventually fall upon what would become the world of Maripool - a captivating mix of melancholy that swirls between the delightful wonders of articulated shoegaze, and a witching hour state of deep-blue dreaming. Maripool’s debut single ‘Blindness’, released in 2021, received critical acclaim from the likes of DIY, So Young, and Pitchfork.
lyrics
Faster my dad said
Wanna get you back again
All the evil wants to stay
But don’t look too deep
or it’s all you’ll ever see
It’s all you’ll see
And it comes back so softly
that I can’t back down
And it comes back so softly
that I can’t back down
It all comes at once
and it screams my name
All the evil stays in me
Didn’t take you long
To see it all through me
To see right through me
And it comes back so softly
that I can’t back down
And it comes back so softly
that I can’t back down
credits
released July 13, 2022
All instruments on this track written and performed by Maripool except for drums which are performed by André Mâncio
Remember how Bill Murray woke up to I Got You Babe every day in Groundhog Day? If that song would have been Made Of Moods, he at the very least experienced three and a half perfect minutes each day. It’s one of those songs that I enjoy each and every second of, with it’s jangly guitars and hushed vocals that almost have a Beach Boys vibe, especially in the verse. Truly, it’s a song for the ages. But the best news about Still Life is that it offers eleven additional underground pop gems. Niek || Add To Wantlist
Hearing this album for the first time I knew that I was going to get the Vinyl. Star Party really ate, no crumbs left on the plate. Cheez Sekaquaptewa🧍
