We receive many pitches from artists and their representatives promoting songs and albums that are ‘cinematic yet organic and acoustic’. Or ‘fragile and vulnerable yet intense.’ To be fair many of them actually are but I immediately earmarked EIRA as being able to do all of those things, merely from a cursory listen to her debut EP, ‘Finally I can breathe’.
It’s a six-track album tracing a journey from barely surviving to emerging intact again on the other side.
I don’t know precisely what journey she was on, nor if she merely observed it in another person or went through it herself but I suspect it is the latter. It is one of darkness, transformation and healing she says, which points to affairs of the heart and substantiated by song titles like ‘Barely surviving’ and ‘Wish I could forgive’.
All her songs are studied, well constructed and melodic. I hasten to add atmospheric because that’s almost a throwaway adjective now, along with ethereal. But when push comes to shove, atmospheric is just what they are where they are required to be and she is adept at changing the dynamic of a song as it progresses.
I was going to offer the title track as the sample one but because one of the artists she compares herself to is her compatriot Aurora I selected ‘Warrior’ which is also the title of an Aurora song and there are a few similarities to the Bergen ‘warrior’s style.
EIRA’s ‘Warrior’ seems to concern inner turmoil, insomnia, and surviving emotional trauma in the form of a mental ‘war inside you’. Most importantly, resilience.
And if I read it correctly the track signals the moment when the ‘fight back’ begins, when she starts to turn the tables against her protagonist. In the video the dawn sun breaks through the curtains and illuminates her now tearless face.
EIRA’s voice is mature, calculated and focused, with none of the breathless angst of Aurora, the song is well paced and the lyrics convincing.
A great start.
Find her on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eirahol/
