At long last, my personal Carly Rae Jepsen has returned: Sky Ferreira, the Twin Peaks-starring singer/songwriter and model has released her first new solo music since her fantastic debut album, 2013’s pop masterpiece, Night Time, My Time. The song is called “Downhill Lullaby,” and it’s the lead single from her long-awaited sophomore album, Masochism. The track clocks in at around five-and-a-half-minutes (considerable length for a comeback single) and has a haunting string section that reminds me of the Verve’s 1997 hit “Bittersweet Symphony,” if only it were recorded in hell. Around the 18-second mark, a deep, descending bass lick kicks in, not unlike the kind popularized by ’80s post-punks Sister of Mercy; it carries throughout, grounding the song in abyssal darkness.
Obviously, it’s too early to tell what the rest of Ferreira’s new material will sound like, but predictions could be pulled from the Pitchfork digital cover story on the singer, published Tuesday. She told journalist Camille Dodero that the album is “abstract… very big, but also very violent, but not all the songs are super-dark,” and she compared the making of “Downhill Lullaby” to Mickey Mouse’s Fantasia, saying, “You know how all the brooms are making a gigantic mess and the water starts rising and rising and rising and rising? It was sort of like that: Magical, but at the same time, ‘What is going on?’ And then cleaning it all up.”
Thus begins the era of Goth Ferreira.