We’ve featured the work of Ainsley Farrell on several occasions of late, most recently with single, ‘Buffet‘. A song about encounters with toxic masculinity which “simmers with competing energies,” as we put it. “The writhing discomfort of the experience matched only by an ever-present anger now brought to the boil.“ The song offered a great counterpoint to first single ‘The Way Back’ and its compassionate intimacy, with Farrell highlighting the breadth of sound and focus so effectively.
The US-born, Sydney-based songwriter is gearing up to release a full-length album later this year, and has released another single, ‘Fireworks’, to offer a glimpse at yet another dimension of her work. It’s a track which fits into the indie rock lineage of Dacus and Bridgers, confessional in its tone and cathartic in practice, holding up vulnerabilities as a way in which to conquer them.
This time Ainsley Farrell takes a disorientating experience on the fourth of July in Rhode Island and reworks the scene to speak to such ideas. “I was working through some sadness and anxiety but forced myself to go out to see the fireworks with friends,” she explains. “We were biking down the river path thick with smoke when I lost them. I paused in the thick smoke and couldn’t see anything else around me. I could only hear the sound of the fireworks going off in the night sky and imagined what it would feel like to burn that bright.”