![]() We’ve acknowledged the issues, and now what can we do about them? I think that is relatable to the current climate. NNAMDÏ : What I love about this song is the first chunk is inquisitive and dissective, and with that line “Let’s go hunting for the key,” things shift to a proactive approach. Why can’t we actually find the key to unlocking the core of these things?” Dissecting a relationship in the form of song or poetry is really fascinating and terrifying and leaves you a bit raw. Issues with the same core come up and once you start to pull apart the meat of a fight you are often left with the same few themes. ![]() NIIKA : I think often you find within any long-term relationship that you end up hashing over the same problems a lot of times in different iterations. It’s not presented like it’s a new effort, or even like it’s happening in real time necessarily. Unrecognizable! To me this song seems to be a story about attempting to mend a relationship that’s had rocky moments. I patched those pants up so many times over years, and by the time they became unsalvageable and I decided to part with them, it was a whole new creature. Like with a lot of things in life, the longer you wait to deal with certain issues the worse it can become. I used to have a pair of really nice pants that started unraveling, and every time that happens to any of my clothes, I have a minor panic attack! I don’t know how to sew anything. The wavering high vocals above that guttural growl remind me of an animal soaring above and looking down at itself having some sort of out of body experience. A deep, spacious synth swells out of nothing into a warbled drone. The first line that comes in on the album, “Pull at the thread watch it unravel,” is such a fitting lyric to accompany what’s happening sonically from the very beginning. NNAMDÏ : I would say your voice is sweet. I really want to invite people in and bring them really close, but there’s another part of me that wants to hold on to the mystery and mystique around it. It embodies my experience making music and sharing it. And it’s kind of that push and pull, which I think exists in my music as well, where I have this kind of sweet voice, - I’m not saying “I have a sweet voice,” but it’s quite feminine and high - but the music often times has these weird, maybe not super expected, or not entirely pleasure-oriented sounds and decisions being made. It’s got like this sweet, childlike edge to it, but it also has me eating this dead bird and blood dripping from it. When my friend Vivian Le, who designed the cover art, sent me her first draft, the feeling just sort of clarified itself. ![]() NIIKA : I delayed finding a name for the album for a really long time, but when it popped up, I didn’t ponder it too long. NNAMDÏ : Where did the album name Close But Not Too Close come from? Here, NIIKA, aka Nika Nemirovsky, talks with fellow Chicagoan NNAMDÏ, aka Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, about her new album, which you can also listen to right here. Along with streams of upcoming albums - today’s is NIIKA’s Close But Not Too Close - we publish statements from artists and their peers about the mindsets and impressions that go into, or come out of reflection on, a record. Hear First is Talkhouse’s series of album premieres.
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