Sydney’s Moody Beach (the work of Melissah Mirage) has been catching the attention of Backseat Mafia this year with her dirty, scuzzy brand of shoegaze dream pop, delivered with a shot glass full of swagger and a black leather jacket draped attitude. Two earlier singles this year, ‘Chance’ and ‘The Other’, set the radar blinking, and now, with the release of ‘Plastic Love’, Moody Beach confirms her place in the list of exciting artists to follow in 2021.
‘Plastic Love’ has a fuzzy wall of noise that is laced with Mirage’s cool, sneering delivery, one that would match Jim Reid’s insouciance in The Jesus and Mary Chain. And yet it is lightened by a melody that could have come from a sixties girl group – a lovely tension with its dissociated lyrics:
Oh no I think I’m coming last
Life on the inside seems detached
Maybe it’s time that I loosened up
Don’t stop giving all that plastic love
To me
‘Plastic Love’ is immensely cathartic with its dirty buzz and arched eyebrow chill. Mirage says of the track:
When writing ‘Plastic Love’ I was thinking about all the different kinds of romantic love I’ve experienced. I’m serially monogamous and have felt trapped in convenient relationships before. On the flipside, for a short time, I pursued open relationships and revelled in feeling detached from lovers. Both felt insincere and artificial to me, like plastic.
The video was shot at Glider Festival in Marrickville, Sydney by Throat Pasta. The event raised funds and awareness for mental health with proceeds going to Beyond Blue. It is an appropriately fuzzy and distorted performance piece that puts on full display the enigma of Moody Beach:
The track features Kim Moyes from The Presets on drums. All tracks will be on Moody Beach’s forthcoming EP ‘Assembly of the Wild’, arriving via Viscera Arts on 8 October 2021. In the meantime, you can download/stream ‘Plastic Love’ here.
The tracklist for ‘Assembly of the Wild is:
- Surprise & Delight (interlude)
- The Other
- Why Not
- Summer (interlude)
- Plastic Love
- Deep Tie
- Veins
Feature Photograph: Simon Cecere
