EP Review: Bipolar Sunshine – ‘Drowning Butterflies’
2 min read
The highly anticipated Drowning Butterflies EP is finally out, and boy do Bipolar Sunshine have some killer tracks for you! The solo project of Manchester-based Adio Merchant have only just started picking up hype. With music described as electronic dream-pop and an eye-catching name, Bipolar Sunshine is ready to become a success.
Drowning Butterflies is a 4-track EP and is Merchant’s second release, through The Aesthetic Recording record label. It’s opening track Love More Worry Less is already hit with listeners and getting lots of airplay. The lyrics are vivid and straight to the point, as the first voice played with minimal accompaniment sings the first lines: ‘Another pregnant girl underage. You know you can’t show anyone in the same household. Oh the boy doesn’t care, the story ain’t news.’
But as the song progresses, there’s a sort of jump-kick in the music, the guitars pick up, the drums pick up, the harmonies become bolder. And all of a sudden everything stops and words ‘love more and worry less’ hit you, and the vocals echo through until you’re just left there in some sort of equilibrium, as the song perfectly ends to humming that you can’t help humming along with.
However, the second track Drowning Butterflies works a little bit differently. It’s backing instruments and synths create a very tropical atmosphere, while Merchant’s layering vocals are haunting more than anything, as if counteracting the upbeat instrumentation.
The looming effect of Merchant’s voice is continued in Trouble In Drowning. There’s a strong sense of the dreaminess in the song that his music is categorized as, evident in the echoing harmonies and the subtlety of the piano amongst the bold synths and drum work.
And the EP ends with Woz’s remix of Love More Worry Less. The remix takes the heavy focus off the vocals of the song, and puts the spotlight on the accompaniment itself, adding his own style of drum beat and highlighting the back-up vocals and humming. This makes the listener focus more on that tranquility of the song, where the roles have been switched so that it seemed like the vocals were accompanying the instruments.
Rumours of an album release have been going around since The Guardian’s feature of Bipolar Sunshine online, and whatever the case Merchant should be prepared for even more fans. Success is in his grasp, all thanks to his thought-provoking music.
