We first introduced Martha’s Calling, the new EP from New York-based songwriter Caroline Strickland coming soon on Good Eye Records, last September with single ‘Loving You Right’. It was a song which looked “to work through a period of uncertainty and distance through sheer momentum,” as we put it, “gathering a head of steam as though Strickland plans to thrust herself into something hard at high speed in the hope of shattering that which imprisons her.” The track embodied the themes of an EP which follows a path from deluded desperation to self-actualisation, Strickland’s alt rock style probing at the border between self-belief and arrogance while maintaining an undeniable tenderness.
With the EP’s release fast approaching, Caroline Strickland has returned with one final single, ‘Prettiest Girl of Heaven’. Again utilising a sense of infectious energy to its benefit, the song adopts its title as a kind of mantra, repeating the phrase over and over as though to convince or make true via force of will. “Can I / Grab a hold of your hand make you understand / That I / Am in love with you now?” Strickland asks in one verse, and the desire behind this question fires the entire song.
Holding onto you I see it
Broken in disguise
Sunset on a blue pacific
Prudent emerald eyesYou are one of the prettiest girls of heaven, heaven