Alice Mary lays it bare on latest track ‘Surgeon’
The Eastender who is not afraid to get deep is back and at it again with latest single
Photo: Ben Peter Catchpole
After garnering attention with her phenomenal debut EP I Am Here in 2017, East London’s Alice Mary is back and better than ever as she previews her latest single Surgeon — it is safe to say that the singer has not left us disappointed with this release.
A self-produced retro pop-rock single, Surgeon sees her explore themes surrounding love, depression and self-harm. Such sensitive topics, yet she navigates them beautifully; encouraging listener introspection throughout with her rhetorical lyrics and distinctively dark humour.
As well as being lyrically audacious, this single is musically intriguing, and Alice most definitely explores new territory with regards to instrumentation on this latest track.
Surgeon drops listeners immediately into a small, harmonious swell of warm analogue synthesizers which provide a retro, lo-fi feel to the track. The small swell acts as a rise of sorts and is a precursor to the main introductory sequence which is dreamy and fantastic.
The introduction to Surgeon is beautifully simple and stripped back. The backbeat of the introduction is a simple kick drum, snare and rolling hi-hat pattern that provides listeners with a basic yet highly satisfactory groove. The main melody is that of an amped electric guitar playing a simple tune, however, the dreamy reverb and harmonious floating synth pads which play in the background, create a truly sublime sense of movement that has the listener swaying to and fro.
After this four-bar intro, sultry vocals are introduced along with smooth electric piano chords, and it is here where the exploration of love and self-harm begins as she declares, “The surgeon who loved you sewed you back together / When you made a hole in your skin big enough to crawl in I wonder what you found there”. She continues by asking “Did you find out what you’re made of? Did you find what you were looking for? / Did you find out what you’re made of? Did you find a place to put it all?”
The lyrics of Surgeon undoubtedly hit hard and are uncomfortable to listen to at times, but it is this exploration of the uncomfortable in her music that is gaining her attention left, right and centre. When asked about the song’s lyrics and subject matter she explained, “Surgeon is about something I never thought I’d write about until I did. I ended up writing the lyrics in this really simple, almost childlike style because that’s the only way I could look back at what had happened”.
Written from personal experience, it’s evident that Surgeon is far more than just a song for Alice and is deep-rooted in previous trauma making the song even more profound.