The music of Montreal’s LISA exists at the intersection of nostalgic familiarity and playful invention, where the comfort of recognition is constantly shifted and denied by a stranger, more alien edge. Therefore, while LISA owes much to classic folk and pop, there is something otherworldly present too—her songs charting a world that appears to be ours but also not, as though everything we think we know about our times is slowly growing peculiar and strange.
Ahead of her self-titled debut EP, LISA has released lead single ‘Primitive Us’. The track is an excellent example of her idiosyncratic style. With its woozy instrumentation and luscious vocals, the song could stand tall as an provocatively moody slice of indie pop, though the offbeat tone soon becomes clear and the scope of the track’s emotional range becomes clear.
Far from being solely the standard fare of broken hearts and personal turmoil, the song is placed very much in the context of our times, where inter-connectivity and technological encroachment is changing both the physical contours of the world and the way in which we experience it. LISA brings to life the feeling of being caught in the constant beam of information, a flow that rarely squares with physical experiences, and also the resulting daze—a paralysis that extends to even the overt destruction of the planet that is occurring all around us.
