Mhairi brings order to chaos on "Crystalline"

22 March 2016, 09:25 | Written by Michael McAndrew

(Tracks)

(Mhairi)

To the naked eye, crystals appear relatively simple; a collection of flat faces oriented into a single, readily recognisable shape. Put them under the microscope (or use X-ray diffraction if you’re feeling fancy), however, and it’s clear that the object we’re familiar with is a vast collection of single shapes, chaos given structural order by atomic events.

You can see how the analogy might appeal to 20-year-old Bournemouth singer Mhairi on her debut track “Crystalline”. In what she describes as an “internal dialogue”, her thoughts are a mess. She’s torn between two extremes, insisting that she “will make you colder if you stay with me” and wondering aloud if “maybe [she] could make it simple/[she] could stay alone”. Then again, she knows she might need saving from herself.

It’s a torrent of conflicting ideas, a nervous breakdown put to music. The instrumentation emphasises the loneliness of such a state: drums skitter and drift away like half-formed thoughts put out of mind, and strings swell and seem to pulse with the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Though she claims Imogen Heap, Peter Gabriel, and Massive Attack as influences, her icily orchestral music also shares DNA with another artist who’s released a song called “Crystalline”. The Arca co-productions on Bjork’s Vulnicura, in particular, which married anarchic yet precise beats to devastatingly cathartic lyrics, provide a fascinating reference point. What held that collection together is mirrored in “Crystalline”: the power of a talented singer floating above tumultuous compositions, bringing order to chaos.

Mhairi had this to say of her debut: "'Crystalline' explores the feeling of being lost inside your own mind, and how introversion can be a detriment to your sense of self and the relationships you have. The lyrics follow an internal dialogue, and shows a kind of struggle between two parts of my mind - one that needs to indulge in being alone, and one that needs to be anywhere else other than inside my own head.”