Elba, the independent artist Ellen Bathum,has visited us twice before with material that was contradictory, after the despondency of her pandemic era album ‘Teardrops & Blind Spots’, namely last year’s singles ‘You do you’ and ‘I’m a dancer’, both of which count amongst the five tracks on her recent EP ‘Mirrorball’, and which were bouncy, anthemic numbers.
Now she’s back with much of the same fayre, the single and EP track ‘We can do this,’ which she reveals surprisingly to have been written during that difficult period of stress she encountered in 2021 and which she countered by writing songs about various self-empowering topics.
‘You do you’ and ‘Kindness’ were written to boost self-esteem, ‘I’m a Dancer’ and ‘Confetti’ to broadcast her signature electronic pop sound, while her journey out of darkness and back into the light and starting to appreciate all the positive things in life underpins – ‘We can do this’, with the stress on ‘we’.
Praise the Lord, it sounds like it’s going to be as reverential as Johnny Cash’s ‘I saw the light’ but her real support came not in the form of divine intervention but rather inviting the people who care about her to help her face her demons; to catch her if she fell.
You know she could have written this as a ballad but it might then have been depressing. She strikes instead a healthy balance between story-telling lyricism and dance floor vibes.
Where the song really scores is in the ultra catchy repetitive chorus which makes two appearances. During the second one it gravitates into the outro and marks a huge change to the nature of the song, which becomes pure EDM and I’m certain someone is going to ask her to make an entire song out of in time for this year’s main season in Ibiza or wherever the kids hang out these days.
It’s also so sync-able it’s only a matter of time before it ends up in a TV advert, or even a drama on the small or big screen. See if I’m not wrong.
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