Written by: Dave Cantrell

A little over a month ago, on September 24th, a quietly breathtaking track was released to the eager and/or unsuspecting masses that not only turned heads but did so in a way that could – if rather gently – produce whiplash in those that were familiar with the artist’s previous work. Called, rather appropriately given both the depth of technique and style and its unforeseen nature (at least for those of yet aware of this project), “Underground,” it introduced a revelatory new voice capturing in its every syllable a dark mystique that was only fleetingly noticeable in her previous band Sugarplum Fairies. While some measure of the ‘sultry existential’ was never far from the gist of the Fairies’ sound and especially in the tonalities of its Viennese-born singer Silvia Ryder, it’s clear, given what we heard a couple years ago in the singer’s first single – and self-titled full-length – under the new solo handle My Violence and especially in the second glimpse off latest self-released album Monday’s Child (released yesterday on, rather appropriately, Halloween) we’re offering you today, that the pop meadows most frequented by that previous venture, no matter how shadowed and/or unsettling they may have not infrequently been, were a fair piece distant from the emotional depths Ryder’s now plumbing as she venture’s deeper into the darkly numinous. That said, what’s perhaps most startling is the extent to which the material here, even as she delves further into said contours, unsettling as they can often be, is in its almost eerie way uplifting. While, yes, counter-intuitive, we here at SEM suspect it’s precisely because of what feels like a fearlessness to ‘go there’ in ways that one cannot help but connect with that seem to come from a place one might describe as a ‘dark resilience’ and my lord do we need examples of exactly that type of resilence these days. So, yeah, all speculation on our part but regardless of how close we are or aren’t to the mark, we can at least assure you that both this single and the album it derives from – which has been on repeat for a couple days now – will not disappoint. Honest to the point of inspiring, Monday’s Child is also just a damned DAMNED great record. Click that video below and find yourself, as we did, simply mesmerized by the humanity and artistry at play.