The Masquerade feels like a love letter to the darker corners of the internet-era music scene—the kind of songs you might once have stumbled across late at night and immediately felt belonged to you. Drawing from the emotional intensity of Evanescence, Paramore, Christina Perri, and Avril Lavigne, this five-track EP resurrects the emo and gothic-pop sensibility of the early and mid-2000s while giving its melodrama a distinctly modern voice. More importantly, though, it is the product of a songwriter finally learning how to turn years of lyrics and melodies into fully realised music.
The journey begins with “Trapped in Wonderland,” where immersive heavy bass and melodic guitars create a dense emotional landscape. Shimmering textures hover around the arrangement while the singer delivers every line with a moody, despondent restraint, capturing the feeling of being trapped inside sadness with nowhere obvious to escape. It is an appropriately vulnerable opening to a project that began with the artist’s earliest steps into songwriting and production.
By the time we reach “Masquerade,” the mood has become more confrontational. Heavy instrumentation, chiming melodic guitars, and thumping beats give the track a darker momentum as the singer ponders her frustrations and questions the philosophies surrounding betrayal, deception, and pretending. That recurring idea of fakeness becomes the EP’s connective tissue, moving through cheating, lying, victim-blaming, and dissociation before gradually turning toward something more empowering.
What makes The Masquerade especially satisfying is that it refuses to remain trapped in sadness and anger. “Don’t Let Me Go” reportedly changed the direction of the entire project by introducing hope, allowing the narrative to move from being wounded to becoming stronger. Recorded at home in Massachusetts before stems and vocals travelled to a producer in Georgia, the EP carries the intimacy of something built piece by piece. Ultimately, The Masquerade is about surviving the things that once defined you, and learning that moving on can be its own kind of victory.
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Review by: Naomi Joan