Is It Really Goodnight?, the new EP from London-based songwriter Celeste Madden on Sad Club Records, is both a picture of a specific and especially difficult period in the life of its creator and the very thing which helped drag her towards the light. “I felt like I couldn’t get through one thing without the next issue arriving, so I wrote songs as I worked through it,” as Madden explains. It’s question embodying the tone of the release, the title orginated during a sleepless night in the aftermath of a break-up. “I was up late, reflecting on everything, asking myself: is it really over? Is it really the end?” she continues. “It’s a bittersweet question, because even if you say goodbye, there’s always the hope of a new beginning.”
Supported by Jonjo Kunz-Loncq (drums) and Robbie Carman (bass), and produced by Joseph Fútak and mastered by Tom Nixon, Celeste Madden walks this line between loss and promise with a decidedly ethereal air. Something apparent from the opening notes of ‘Nightly Routine’, its poignant hush evoking that late-night loneliness of an empty room. “Brushed my teeth for what I thought / Was gonna be my last,” as the opening lines go. “Lean into the aftershock / Of April fading fast / Into the citrine summer dew.” The juxtaposition of personal stillness versus passing time leads to a building tension. The frustration inherent within the state of being unable to properly make oneself known.
This is my nightly routine
This is my bread and butter
Everybody knows what’s wrong with me
But nobody knows what’s the matter
‘Lapdog’ is no different, a “dreamlike folk song where placid surfaces hide a roiling depth beneath,” as we described previously, “reflecting on difficult experiences in order to exorcise the hold of the past,” while centrepiece ‘Millennium’ turns towards hopes of resuscitating a relationship, building in intensity across the track as the vocals grow increasingly desperate. Named after the episode of The X-Files in which Mulder and Scully finally kiss, the song lands somewhere between a promise and demand, wishing to retain the devotion of a shared history even in a fractious present.
This duality between sorrow and love marks the entire release, not least closer ‘Fever Dream’. “Pairing acute longing with an ethereal air,” as we wrote in a preview, “the song charts those heady days of romance where pleasure and frustration accentuate one another and everything feels so close yet so far away. A state almost unreal in its experience.” The EP, unready or unable to quite answer its central question, lives within this space. It is not clear if it really goodnight, because for now at least, Celeste Madden has made a home within the grey boundary in between.
Is It Really Goodnight? is out now via Sad Club Records and you can get it from the Celeste Bandcamp page.