Sibille Attar’s ‘Slow Down’ isn’t a doctor’s order because she’s been overdoing it down at the gym and then partying until dawn.
Rather it’s a message to herself and/or others to take stock of the fact that lurve is really just pain in disguise and that it will bite you eventually. So you’d better find some mitigating factors to control it or learn to live with its repercussions. Alternatively, she suggests, it could be just a lullaby sung for someone who is “immensely adored without the capacity to hold on to love.”
Of course, I know the feeling. Story of my life. J Honest.
The track is the first from an album that will be released in the autumn and which is “a cycle of songs about falling in love, unfolding in real time”. It will be her first album in English since 2021’s ‘A History of Silence’. In 2024 she recorded her first and only solo album in Swedish, called ‘BRUTAL’.
Strangely the lyrics here suggest to her beau that he (as always I assume it is a he) might consider some gym time:
“Hush now/Hush now baby/You′ve been cryin’ too hard lately
Go work out/Breathe in deeply/You can lean on me if you’re sleepy”.
She then goes on to draw some analogies as to how close they could be once he reaches this state of nirvana –
“The bird and the tree/the halo and the moon/the beach and the sea”.
It’s all done rather sensually, in a tranquil Mazzy Star fashion, with a psych twist and backed by a pop riff and big prog style percussion.
An unusual mix of styles but one which works very well, and in a wider sense it encourages the listener to do exactly what the song title says, to chill out and to dispense with negativity. Imagine Holly Herndon’s ‘Lonely at the top’ set to music.
Perhaps she should play it to Pete Hegseth.
(Continues after the Spotify link).
Visually, Sibille comes across as being somewhere between Jenny Hval and Poly Styrene.
‘Slow Down’ was written, produced and recorded by Sibille, who also performed most of the instruments herself with the help of Rebecka Rolfart of The Hanged Man on bass.
She promises that both national and international tour dates are coming.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sibilleofficial
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sibilleattar/
Bandcamp (track): https://sibilleattar.bandcamp.com/track/slow-down
