Melbourne’s Totally Mild write songs that are lush and luxurious, polished to sparkle. Her, the band’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, is full of narrative heart, but with a Stepford sheen. Teasing out a thematic tension between the loving and the lacklustre, the domestic and the deluxe, vocalist/guitarist and songwriter Elizabeth Mitchell’s voice is crystal clear. It weaves through her band’s lyrical, immaculately considered arrangements with a dexterity that speaks volumes of the band’s capacity to let melodies grow, breathe, and take shape.
Mitchell says of the album’s title that many of the songs meditate on the female experience: of love, of domesticity, of surveillance, of bliss, and of anxiety. The portrait of Mitchell’s mother that hangs in the corner of the album’s cover signals the overarching sense of the feminine that hovers over Her. Mitchell notes that while the second-person address on the record often functions to address a lover or a friend, sometimes the ‘you’ she addresses is an aspirational self: they’re subtle, reflexive bids for self-empowerment.
On Her, Totally Mild are in dialogue with their debut, the critically acclaimed Down Time. Down Time'very much mused on what it meant to be a young person who found solace in ill-advised parties and people, while Her is a wiser record. Although Her has its moments of melancholy, it’s a reflective, meditative sadness that replaces Down Time’s lethargy. On Her, Totally Mild move through light and shade with smoky, silky finesse.
Release: Chapter Music, February 23rd, 2018
Words: Chapter/Inertia
Mitchell says of the album’s title that many of the songs meditate on the female experience: of love, of domesticity, of surveillance, of bliss, and of anxiety. The portrait of Mitchell’s mother that hangs in the corner of the album’s cover signals the overarching sense of the feminine that hovers over Her. Mitchell notes that while the second-person address on the record often functions to address a lover or a friend, sometimes the ‘you’ she addresses is an aspirational self: they’re subtle, reflexive bids for self-empowerment.
On Her, Totally Mild are in dialogue with their debut, the critically acclaimed Down Time. Down Time'very much mused on what it meant to be a young person who found solace in ill-advised parties and people, while Her is a wiser record. Although Her has its moments of melancholy, it’s a reflective, meditative sadness that replaces Down Time’s lethargy. On Her, Totally Mild move through light and shade with smoky, silky finesse.
Release: Chapter Music, February 23rd, 2018
Words: Chapter/Inertia
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