Punch Drunk, with its burbling bass, twisty tune and vocal swoops and dives, is a knowing ode to infatuation that meshes Lene Lovich’s loopy new wave and Olivia Rodrigo’s trick of admitting one’s bad decisions and owning them, a la the internal monologue of Bad Idea, Right?.“It makes me sick, and I hope it never ends,” Mayberry sings, knowing this thing she’s involved in won’t end well, but wrapping her arms around it anyway.
She’s in a similar frame of mind in Shame, a song about being hopelessly attracted to men she knows are wrong for her. In a recent interview, she talked about how the song was inspired by the idea that a whole generation of girls such as herself grew up with screen characters like those played by Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites – the broody, floppy-haired, self-obsessed man-child. “Even when I watch the film now, I’m still horny, it’s still hot,” she said. “But he’s incredibly rude and dismissive… I’m hardwired to find that attractive.”
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Things slow down and get more reflective on tracks Oh Mother and Are You Awake? – both are piano-based ballads, the former vaguely echoing the child-parent dynamic of Harry Chapin’s Cat’s in the Cradle, but from the female perspective; the latter a rumination on missing her home, family and friends in Glasgow (she’s now based in Los Angeles) but at the same time knowing she had to move on.
There are a couple of missteps, too. A Work of Fiction is too fussy and flighty for its own good, while Sunday Best, with its Fatboy Slim-style blocky piano, paint-by-numbers string samples and Madchester baggy backbeat could be mistaken for a Spice Girls’ solo single from the early 2000s.
Fortunately, these two are at the back end of a debut solo album that has already made its mark and made its point, with Mayberry planting her flag in the dance floor and baring her soul in the process.
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