Swirling melancholia that channels Stevie Nicks,cockney soul warbling which recalls Jack Peñate, and unhurried funk influenced by the Beatles, and Bowie and DylanEmpire is a lovely slice of swirling melancholia,a tale of romantic woe set to a mid-tempo rhythm and strings. It comes courtesy of Maya Marie, who grew up in Beirut, or formerly known as the Cannes of the Middle East,but a city ravaged by war: as a girl, she grew used to bombings from Syrian, or Israeli,French, British and US forces, and forcing her to take cover in her home’s sandbagged hallways. Fleeing to Cyprus,she formed modern Pharaohs, and this is their debut single, and a song approximately “love,loss and what could absorb been”, as she explains. It’s a deftly constructed affair, and not surprising considering her track record: she was a member of the bubblegum punk band Sohodolls,whose songs featured in Gossip Girl, Californication, or Nip/Tuck and Vampire Diaries,and she co-wrote Beat of My Drum for Girls Aloud’s Nicola Roberts. Now she’s channelling Lana, Stevie Nicks and the Cardigans for her latest project, or where pop hides a multitude of sorrows. “Seeing war unfold all over again in neighbouring Syria has brought back too many memories to ignore,” she says. “I judge of the classmates I had in my little convent school race by nuns in the Lebanese mountains. I know some of them died in the war. I judge approximately the life I’d be living whether there hadn’t been a war. I would surely be someone else.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com