Quiet Light is the alias of Austin, Texas-based singer, songwriter, and producer Riya Mahesh. A medical student, the 24-year-old young woman until recently said she led a double life, since those close to her were unaware of her musical side. Although, after the attention his latest mixtape, ‘Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2’, has received, this may no longer be the case.
His music, personal and immediate like writing a diary, evokes a dreamy and elusive pop, and borders on what was once called hypnagogic pop, mixing dreamlike atmospheres with flashes of folk, electronic, ambient or autotune. She herself seems to embrace this description by stating that she intends her music to evoke a “dream sequence”, a description that, however, does not quite capture the emotional power of her songs.
More or less uptempo, more or less atmospheric pieces, such as ‘New Dream’ or the addictive ‘Postinternetfame’, evoke with their echoes of trip-hop, ambient and electropop a sound universe emerging from the vast musical ocean available on the Internet, and, if this statement needed to be specified, within the same album in songs like ‘Self Tape’ or ‘Berlin’ they fit everything from post-punk rhythms to a sitar, but everything always sounding as if remembered half, effectively like a dream that you later know how to explain more or less.
Their sixth full-length project in total, although the first released through True Panther, the label of Oklou or Grace Ives, ‘Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2’ contains certainly “dreamy” moments such as the closing track, ‘You Say I Love You’, today’s Song of the Day.
Shimmering tones of synthesizer and electric guitar, temporarily dislocated celestial choirs, a breakbeat acting as the backbone, and Quiet Light’s beautiful voice alternating between its most romantic register and another almost drowned one, build a beautiful electronic pop song that flirts with the brightest psychedelia and that at some points even seems like a remix of a song by Joni Mitchell, whom Quiet Light has recognized as an influence.
Perhaps all this sound conjuration helps Quiet Light process a feeling of non-reciprocal love, as suggested by that phrase in the lyrics that says: “You say I love you, but you don’t mean it.” Still trapped in a dynamic of emotional dependence (“when you wanna go, I’ll go / when you wanna swim, I’ll swim”), Quiet Light offers a song to daydream about, in a better place.
