'Mercurial' released today via Island Records/UMA.
Arriving five-plus years after Vera Blue’s stunning, Gold-certified debut Perennial album, Mercurial intersperses soul-searching ballads (like lead single ‘The Curse’, which is about falling for your bestie) with electropop bangers (see: ‘Lethal’, with its vivacious synth evoking The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’) for dancing the hurt away.
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Celia Pavey (the gifted artist behind the moniker) found creating Mercurial therapeutic while navigating a breakup and prioritising mental health following her anxiety and depression diagnoses: “Step forward, step back/ I take every day as progress/ I acknowledge, react/ And learn to trust the process” – opener ‘Alright Now’ boasts crisp production and glitchy, skittish beats that channels Flume, a former collaborator.
Latest single ‘Mermaid Avenue’ (named after an idyllic street in Sydney’s South Coogee) explores heartbreak (“I wish that I knew back then/ That we would become past tense”). “I hate it/ I love it/ I’m in it/ So fuck it/ HEY!” – funkadelic riffs and whip-cracking drum-machine beats elevate ‘Feel Better’. Gentle strumming and minimal instrumentation accompany ‘Heart Still Works’ until multilayered harmonies and swelling synths take flight: “Each time I see you I feel something beating/ It’s nice to know that/ My heart still works…”
Her vocals are perennially flawless (even when singing, “Drunk, crying in a fancy dress”) and, throughout the deeply personal Mercurial, Pavey embraces vulnerability as a superpower.
Label: Island Records/UMA
Release date: 28 October
Vera plays the Forum on November 12, see her full tour dates and buy tickets here.
