Stream: Steffaloo, ‘Happy’

Kevin Bronson on January 7th, 2017

0

Almost six years have passed since Steph Thompson — aka Steffaloo — released her debut “Meet Me in Montauk,” a raw, made-in-the-bedroom collection of confessionals. She followed with full-lengths for Mush Records in 2012 and ’13, marrying her ethereal vocals with the work of a host of experimental electronic producers. After a period she described as “because life happens,” she returned last year with an EP she made with singer-songwriter Katrina Stone, “Throw Me to the Wolves.”

Steffaloo returns next month with a new EP, “Happy,” which sounds anything but considering her travails the past few years (which include a battle with auto immune disease). She explains that in writing the new songs she reconnected with the naked honesty displayed on that first album. “It’s about somehow uniting the pain and the beauty,” she tells YVYNYL, where the title track premiered this week, “because I think when you see the dark side of life and look it right in the face, everything beautiful and good and right in the world becomes that much more present. This is art to me.” The song begins with a heart-melting verse: “You were my cigarette / you were my brandy wine / you left my soul red / you left my heart dead,” yet over a beautiful plucked guitar, and perhaps some of staring-it-right-in-the-face, she declares, “I’m alright somehow.”

“Happy” will be out Feb. 3 on Bandcamp.

||| Stream: “Happy”