“A piece of idiosyncratic pop which melds the experience of classical training with a willingness to push beyond conventions to mine the fertile ground outside.” That’s how we described ‘Impermanent I’, the first single from Asha Wells‘s forthcoming EP Tears of a Clown on Anxiety Blanket Records, in a preview last December. Wells caught our attention last year with Water Words, an album on Royal Oakie Records which, as we put it, “move[d] through sounds and emotions like scenes in a dream, seemingly disparate thoughts and feeling united by an uncanny common thread.” But the new EP shows the Bay Area artist pivot away from the sounds of the previous record in favour of more left-field sensibilities.
Splitting the difference between pop and folk with avant garde invention, latest single ‘The Carousel’ is typical of this new turn in the Asha Wells sound. “I put all of my coins in the carousel / I’m not sure if you’re coming back or if you’re here still,” they sing, charting the cyclical patterns of a relationship left to linger too long, the landscape growing tired in its repetition. “Are you cold are you alone in your bedless room / are coming back cause I’m here still.” To use the metaphor from the title, a fairground ride is fun for a while, but the novelty of the music and the lights can only carry a person so long before they begin to crave something new.
