by Devin Birse (@devvvvi.b)
There are confident debuts and then there are assured debuts. The former resembles a horse galloping to the front of the race. Teeth a gnashing, foam dripping out its mouth, sprinting ever forward with all the assurance that it shall win. The latter however is a more subdued thing, motionless and still, already certain of its pristine visage. Martha Skye Murphy’s long-awaited debut is an assured one. Its eleven tracks come together like a series of paintings spread across a single room, all interlinked in proximity and style yet different enough to each be worth a repeated view. Yet together, these tracks form a remarkably curated album of decisive art pop. At times dramatic at others icey and curt, Um is an album of varied emotion and intensity that attacks the listener with precision, poise, and elegance.
Murphy has been on the rise since she made her debut at age nine, singing on Nick Cave & Warren Ellis’ soundtrack to John Hillcoats bleak 2005 western “The Proposition”. Since then, she’s worked with Cave again on Push The Sky Away and gained even more eyes on her thanks to her tormented wails that echoed across Squid’s prog-punk single “Narrator”. Just as her voice burst through those projects it does the same on Um. Her tone and range recall the shifting British weird of Kate Bush but where Bush’s voice would expand into the howls and screams of an angry god, Murphy’s instead takes on an angular quality. Suddenly shifting from its oceanic depths into new dimensions, one moment as wide as the breeze and the next as piercing as a knife. When Murphy howls at the end of “Kind,” she exists beyond the institution. An ethereal wail that slices through every other element of the track to cut through the listener's ear with what feels like all the effort of a whisper.
Across Um, Murphy’s vocals seem to conduct the instrumentals. When she suddenly bursts into a swaying chorus on “Pick Yourself Up,” the baroque plucking that backed her rises into jangling bells, and on debut single “Need,” her wails merge with Roy Montgomery’s guitar playing to create a climax that sounds rapturous in the literal sense. At its best moment Um’s combination of Murphy's ethereal voice and whirring instrumentals feels like the sonic equivalent of being sucked through a black hole. As if in one moment you’re seeing all of eternity and in the next being consumed by it.
As overwhelming as Um can initially seem, underlying the album is a keen element of restraint. While these tracks are often glorious, they are always paced with a precision that intermingles the highs with quieter moments leading to tracks that sway between the ominous and tender. While its soundscapes may vary from the glitchy electronic-infused balladry of “IRL” to the mournful rainy instrumental closer of “Forgive,” every piece feels distinctly unique in its vision. It is tempting to place Murphy as part of a new wave of British experimentalists thanks to the album having songwriter wunderkind Ethan P. Flynn on production and being released on the rapidly rising AD 93 label but even then, that feels like a dilution of what Murphy has created here, an album that feels sonically fresh and apart from much of her contemporaries. It's a unique ice-cold vision of art pop, one that can feel as oppressive as the interrogation room on its album cover. Yet if you push past that sheen, you'll find a piece of intelligent and earnest songwriting that knows when to sharpen its edges and let down its shoulders with equal intuition.