A title like "SPLAT!" conjures visions of neon goop and cartoonish slapstick, but the latest single from London-based songwriter Ella Smoker under her gglum moniker takes the opposite interpretive approach. "SPLAT!," Smoker's first release for Secretly Canadian, is all realism, a low-key rock song that trades in flinty greys and purplish silvers. Its herky-jerky opening verse is a deceptively unassuming introduction, the kind of simple head-down rock song that could float right past your head if you let it. It's when Smoker's chorus — simple, bittersweet, near-perfect — blows through the haze that the song becomes something truly special.
Rolling dreamily through the will-they-won't-they complications of teenage desire and undefined friendships, "SPLAT!" is the kind of song that could play on loop for hours, letting its mercurial indecision wash over you like a fog. Cruelly, it hangs around for less than three minutes, but maybe that brevity is for the best — things can't drag on forever, and somebody's gotta make a move.
(Secretly Canadian)Rolling dreamily through the will-they-won't-they complications of teenage desire and undefined friendships, "SPLAT!" is the kind of song that could play on loop for hours, letting its mercurial indecision wash over you like a fog. Cruelly, it hangs around for less than three minutes, but maybe that brevity is for the best — things can't drag on forever, and somebody's gotta make a move.