For now, it’s refreshing to hear some honesty about what it’s been like the past thirteen months.Īlfred Soto: Her 2019 EP - as fresh as spring air - remains one of my favorites in recent years, and “Bear With Me” matches its best material. “Bear With Me” is likely to age poorly once this is all over. As with her excellent 2019 EP Zandoli, Adigéry’s co-production with Bolis Pupul and Soulwax conjures a dramatic club backdrop, with swooping strings and dense percussion building slowly over four and half minutes.
“Bear With Me” confronts the swirling thoughts of an artist who’s had their world and livelihood whisked away head-on: creative burnout (“livestreams weren’t part of the dream”), the anxiety that follows such burnout (“will you forget about me?”) and reluctant optimism (“we are growing closer as the world drifts apart”).
At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have artists like Charli XCX and Taylor Swift (twice), lauded for efforts that were often designated as “quarantine albums”, a somewhat alienating concept that reads as music’s equivalent of “Shakespeare wrote King Lear during a plague” (the subtext being “so what’s your lazy ass doing during lockdown, hmm?”). Charlotte Adigéry’s approach is far more direct, and as a result it works way better. The few singles that have directly addressed it are either terminally cloying or terminally cynical. Will Adams: Pandemic pop has been a mixed bag. I understand there’s limited material to draw inspiration from, but I wish Adigéry had pushed further in to (lyrical and musical) surreality - surely a form which holds more space for emotional and artistic resonance at the moment. Even the (non-parenthesised) title sounds like something you hear on a zoom call you’re only half paying attention to while trying to ward off a midday breakdown. “Bear With Me” just exists, something else to add to the empty conversation of the day. At least for the moment, a pop song can’t hope to emotionally move us by retelling the hell we’ve been living through. The relentless parallel boredom and emotionality of the moment cancel each other out, clashing violently in our heads everyday and leaking out as dull grey nothing. We can go round in circles arguing whether it’s wrong to make the pandemic/lockdown/This Moment In Time the subject of art - because it’s distasteful, or will date almost immediately - but ultimately I just don’t think it’s interesting. Its cringey references to livestreams (they “weren’t part of the dream”) and people gasping for air (yikes) make it clear that this is Pandemic Pop. Her lyrics follow a similar pattern: dreamlike images (“They say there’s dolphins in Venice”, a reference to a 2020 internet hoax) punctuate a navel-gazing monologue about missing relationships, and working on art while the world is on pause. Instead of exploring the potential of deconstructed disco, Adigéry falls back on a familiar beat.
Pharrell WilliamsĬlaire Biddles: “Bear With Me” begins with a false promise: a thrilling few seconds of anatomised sound that quickly loses its nerve. Donnie Trumpet & the Social Experiment.I LIE HERE BURIED WITH MY RINGS AND MY DRESSES.Email (song suggestions/writer enquiries).