Southend DIY artist BLAB has returned with her new single ‘Full Grown’ via Cool Thing Records (Asylums / Suspects). Self-produced, largely at home in her bedroom, writer and producer Fran Murray follows the playfully destructive ‘Hate Love, Make Love’ released in September. Banner image courtesy of James Mannion.
Artwork courtesy of Frances Murray.
Sonically a world away from ‘Hate Love, Make Love’, BLAB turns her hand to the kind of downtempo indie that her Essex mentor Get Cape Wear Cape Fly! has become so masterful at. Eloquent guitars build a realm of isolation and tense questioning of life’s meaning.
Despite the melancholy, BLAB retains her archetypal playfulness:
“I’m buying vegetables trying not to think about getting older / dying alone”
The sardonic morbidity pulls from peak Kate Nash and Morrissey as she details the futility of life in an economy built by boomers, for boomers. Every time the despair threatens to swell beyond repair, BLAB pulls back with a charm and sarcastic couplet to restore a flicker of hope.
The aching pessimism of a generation is laid bare in a fine slice of alt-pop. Coupled with her punk classic ‘Eton Mess’ and the beats-driven angst of ‘Hate Love, Make Love’, Murray is rapidly on her way to becoming one of the voices of her generation.