The Singles Bar: Ishani prays for relief from ‘Insomnia’
The alt-pop up and comer sends love to her fellow insomniacs.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is the misery-laden rallying cry of insomniacs everywhere ⎯⎯ and it’s a soul-crushing lyric from Ishani‘s new trip-hop single appropriately called “Insomnia.” The production hurtles through spacey folk, psychedelic pop and grunge-rock, as gasoline-soaked electric guitars shatter the arrangement around her. The pieces dust and crumble, but she remains stalwart, leering into the eyes of the venomous, long-fanged demons that take her hostage in the dead of night. “They say you got insomnia,” her voice tilts and trembles mid-air. “They say you travel around the world inside your bed / Ok, can’t sleep at night / It’s only cause you’re hoping / They say tomorrow is gonna be a better day.”
“Insomnia,” in all its spectacularly frenetic dips and blips, serves as a tender kiss, “a love song to all of those sleepless people up all night, trapped in their sheets,” Ishani, who grew up with her family in Bangalore, India, says of the song, which is both oddly comforting and frightening, tapping into fevered night sweats brought on by the troubled, exasperated mental state. “I wanted to send some love and strength to those people. One in three of us experience mild insomnia, but you’re not alone and yours isn’t the only light on in the middle of the night.”
Ishani’s storybook is weathered and yellowed from years of sleepless nights. Her voice, as lilting as it is at times, commands attention, slicing through the manic musical choices with fraught energy. Foot stomps, hand claps and her voice are the last things we remember, as our minds slip further into sleep’s scuffed-up, overly-broiled edges into a town we’ve never known. “Worry makes you older,” she sings, slyly laced with arsenic-like toxicants.
“Insomnia” samples her forthcoming debut EP, Stormy Emotions, out this summer.
Grade: 3 out of 5
Listen below:
