By JACK ROGERS
Softcult have shared a new song from their upcoming EP ‘Year Of The Snake’, and it’s a beauty.
It’s called ‘Perfect Blue’ and reflects that colour-based title perfectly with shimmering shoegaze tones and gorgeous vocal refrains.
It’s musically lighter than their other output but no less deep and affecting.
Vocalist Mercedes Arn-Horn had this to say about the song’s personal edge:
“We wrote ‘Perfect Blue’ about a time in our lives when we felt like nothing was in our control. In our previous project, we were signed to a label that butted heads with us creatively and wasn’t allowing us to express ourselves authentically. They weren’t interested in the music we were creating at the time, so we became unhealthily obsessed with trying to please them to release anything at all.”
And drummer Phoenix added this:
“It felt as though we were putting on an act to survive. We didn’t feel like our art was representing us. There was a lot we wanted to say, but it was being stifled. We felt like we’d lost our integrity. The song is a reminder to empower yourself by standing up for what you believe in, or risk losing yourself altogether.”
And Mercedes had this to say about the video for the track, which she produced and directed:
“I wanted the viewer to feel like they are entering the mind of someone who is watching themselves transform, powerless to stop their metamorphosis. I clearly remember times in my life when I felt pressure to become a version of myself that others wanted me to be, but that version wasn’t authentic to who I was. I felt like I was losing my integrity and my sense of self. I’d look at myself in the mirror and be disgusted at what I saw, unattached to who I had become. There’s a vibe of health anxiety, dysphoria, dissociation, a little horror element in there that I wanted to capture with the visuals. The skin peeling scenes are meant to elicit those feelings, like a snake shedding its skin.”
Here it is:
