Bria Salmena wrestles with the comfort of suffering on “Stretch the Struggle”

There’s often a comfort in toxicity, even if your mental stability is compromised. The endless cycles provide a sense of knowing what’s coming, and it’s easy to relish in that familiar feeling. Bria Salmena battles these emotions with grit and candour on “Stretch the Struggle", the latest single in advance of her debut solo LP.

Originally the front-woman of Canadian experimental post-punk group FRIGS, then a member of Orville Peck’s touring band, Salmena is finally going out on her own but she doesn’t want to back herself into a corner, musically. “I have a really hard time defining myself so concretely because I think that’s just creatively boring,” she says. “I want to do a bunch of different things and explore in all sorts of ways, so it’s nerve-wracking—but it’s also me taking ownership, and that feels good.” “Stretch the Struggle” follows July’s “Bending Over Backwards", two singles off of her upcoming album Big Dog, set for release in March.

Where “Bending Over Backwards” has some of that Peck-inspired country twang mixed with pop textures, “Stretch the Struggle” boils over with a rocking intensity. Salmena creates an LCD Soundsystem-meets-Blondshell sound, featuring heavy percussion and pulsing synths that compliment her low, brooding voice. Thick distorted guitars and backing vocals enter at the chorus to build intensity, with the cascading guitar riffs mirroring the feeling of falling back into unhealthy cycles. Salmena gets gritty, with lines like “And I wrote I hate you I really couldn’t stand you / It was all I thought about” coming out in a raspy drawl, emphasizing her desperation to be free from this toxic cycle.

Salmena expresses a deep self awareness in her lyrics. The “by now” motif in the verses (“By now I should know better,” “By now I shouldn’t care to let you go”) acknowledges the fact that she’s probably let this cycle go on for too long. The use of “should” gives an almost judgemental tone, with Salmena at times seemingly blaming herself for being in this position. It gives the impression that Salmena is really singing this song to herself, rather than the one that is mistreating her. These themes are present in the track’s music video, which shows Salmena wrestling with these uncomfortable emotions while standing alone in vast landscapes, putting an image to the isolation she attempts to push past.