A patient groove here, a little bit of buoyancy from the bass there – at first glance, it would appear that Mary Broadcast’s new EP Panic is one that was born of an increasingly popular minimalism movement in indie pop today. There’s not too much of anything in tracks like “Bazar” and “Zone 4,” and yet beneath the seemingly simplistic surface of these tracks, we discover a wealth of color and emotion just waiting to come undone beneath the pressure of her lyrics.
The guitar’s gentle movements are often fleeting, at least outside of the rock n’ roll of “Bastille,” and when left to her own devices in the likes of “Aver” or the title track, Mary Broadcast shows us a more angelic side of her vocal profile than many will be prepared to witness – diehard supporters included. In a year that has ushered forth a lot of exciting experimentalism from the underground pop circuit, Panic offers up one of the most progressive and intuitive listens that you’re going to find on either side of the Atlantic before the start of the spring season, if not 2022 as a whole.
Poetry is at the foundation of everything that Broadcast is assembling for us in this performance, but in songs like “Sing It,” I think it transcends the limitations of a verse and spreads across to the hook in a manner that brings The Beatles to mind. There’s seamlessness here that you can’t just wish into existence, but instead build upon through years of trial and error, as longtime fans of this artist have already experienced going back to the album Dizzy Venus, way back in 2015.
The fact that every stitch of material on Panic is in the key of G or G-minor is almost incidental comparative to the elegant bonding created through this singer’s voice almost exclusively, and even when she’s hitting the beat as hard as she can, like in “Bastille,” she still manages to sound delicate and in perfect balance with her instrumental backdrop. This is beautifully performed and richly produced, allowing for the essence of every lyric we encounter to find a righteous extension in the music surrounding it.
I came into this record with some high expectations for what the talented and justifiably hyped Mary Broadcast was going to present me with, but I must say now that I was utterly taken aback by just how definitive a collection of material she plays in these six tracks. This is a stunning effort from a vocalist and songwriter who didn’t have anything to prove to the audience or critics like myself in the first place, and while I don’t know that it’s setting the bar too high for her to surpass in a future outing, there’s no question that her peers have a lot to live up to when trying to make something competitive with what Panic is made of. This EP is true brilliance on par with Brielle Brown’s The Well and Kemme’s Cyclorama, both of which won major accolades in 2021.
Heather Savage
