Spinning a “gothweb” of seduction with moody synths and and spellbinding lyrics, Threnody takes dream pop into the underworld.
Drawing inspiration from the farthest corners of the universe, from vampires to video games, Threnody is the Frankenstein child of Madeline Kessen, the artist behind the Pisha moniker. As she describes the album: “I wanted the songs’ mixes to be dense and detailed like an intricate tapestry and take you into another world. Each song exists on its own little planet, if you will.”
The first glimpse down this rabbit hole reveals Pisha’s ability to strike the perfect balance of harshness and poetry. “Freak” opens with unintelligible howling that introduces Threnody’s integral driving drum beat and grungy bass reverb. This heavy rhythmic foundation is the pounding heartbeat of the record and allows the layers of vocals to sound all the more ethereal. When Pisha cleverly moans the chorus: “Fibonacci Uzamaki / Falling down into the spiral of you / Divine equation of your persuasion / A holiness I will never accrue,” soft echoes and sighs add to the clutter of the arrangement and the all-consuming feel of the lyrics. This sentiment of obsession continues on “I’ll Be Your Dog,” where samples of gasping breath keep the downbeat while the lyrics don’t shy away from the strange: “I wash your feet with my hair / And you knight me while I’m kneeling.” Instead of sounding submissive, Pisha’s sensual vocals don’t drown in the textured samples. Effortlessly floating between the hard and the soft, Threnody blurs the lines between traditional power dynamics as well as genre categorizations.
By pulling from goth and electronic styles and pitting unusual sounds together—like the medieval organ and apocalyptic drone on “Claudia”—experimentation sits at Threnody’s core. This is what keeps each track playful, laden with Easter eggs that are a welcome contrast to the morose lyrical themes. It’s easy to miss that “Play Nice” begins with the lyrics: “We don’t have to go home / But we can’t stay here,” while “Home” uses the same lyrics but swaps the “we” for “you.” Threnody is a record that demands close listening, and as Pisha describes it: “The lyrics, though not always easily discernible (this is on purpose), are important to me and contain a lot of hints and references to these things I am inspired by.” A great example is this nod to a childhood refrain—“Cross my heart and hope to die”—in the chorus of “Home” followed with a play on a biblical reference: “Hark the dark angel sings.” In the same way the lyrics morph and blend together, so does the instrumentation. As the bouncy rhythm of “Home” transitions into a distorted violin outro, the track unfolds into something otherworldly and transcendent.
The evolving and shifting rhythms mirror the internal conflict the lyrics portray, between staying and going, restraint and freedom. On “Claudia,” the lyrics turn inwards and lament: “I’ve lived for years / Trapped inside / This body / This prison of mine.” Despite this guarded feeling, the rhythm still runs along rapidly unrestrained, paired with a lighter melody that centers more of Pisha’s vocal abilities. “Gothweb” continues this combination, setting playful vocals and airy chimes and synths with lyrics that describe an inability to connect with words, which is surprising due to the proven lyrical dexterity on Threnody. Tracks like “Right Track” and “Gotta Get Out,” however, hint at an escape route, trading in the heavy bassline for faster synth rhythms that begin to lift the heavy weight of the album’s themes. In “Right Track,” the sparse lyrics are whispered over and over like an incantation while the driving rhythms of “Gotta Get Out” seem to drown out any looking back, rendering both tracks hypnotic and strangely soothing.
As Pisha rages her own internal battle between the walls she traps herself within and the ones that entrap her in the past, Threnody softens enough to catch a glimpse of a more upbeat future: “I have been caught describing the album as sort of a bittersweet lament of the death of a past self. I guess it’s a ‘coming into your own’ kind of thing.” Weaving through moments of hard-fought vulnerability from start to finish, Threnody culminates with a hope of moving past self-destruction into rebuilding, layer by layer, each puzzling sample at a time—in a uniquely Pisha fashion.