Olivia O'Brien’s “Blip” – And How the Popstar Singer-Songwriter Got To It
Olivia O’Brien, born and raised in the heart of southern California, has fishtail-braided bluesy cornflower R&B, plum-and-fig-nectar pop, skull-and-bow pop-punk, and as of these days, art nouveau-orchid alternative. Her first mark was made with her songwriting on her and gnash’s “i hate u, i love u,” a truly Gothic single, interweaving butterscotch hip-hop, grunge’s pecan pie, and the blues’ bleeding heart-upon-a-gingham sleeve. Her first independent song given to eager listeners pierced deeper and tasted richer and sweeter than “i hate u” – cinnamon and molasses-R&B-pop, dark brown sugar 808 drums, and raspy apple pie vocals and harmonies, that spoke aloud if feminine beauty could ever be reached, and how heavenly intoxication can be when your brain is always on fire. Belonging to 2017 and 2018, O’Brien fired her sleeves of arrows into the beauty industrial complex, and our contemporary disconnection from sex and humanity: “Care Less More,” ivory buttercream-R&B-cradled pop taking a scalpel to situationships, and with this sugared pear approach, warms in her hands what it is like to be insecure, and lost, while pursuing your dreams (“I Don’t Exist”). Beneath rosy clouds and to fluttering bassy angel wings, “Love Myself” takes that second scalpel to the lie of self-care and is a love letter to the woman she one day would be, “We Lied To Each Other,” over glasses of tart country strawberry wine, seeks to know the rules of intimacy. Hand-in-hand with this perfection of lilac-caramel pop and lavender lace-edgier genres, O’Brien’s projects after her first album sought out glimmering candy-coated synth constellations to add paints and shades to her palette – “It Was A Sad F****** Summer” mixed 1960’s girl group with the peach bubble-gum and heartfelt blues of The Ronettes, and the sticky confetti-drums and wildflower honey-electric guitar of indie sleaze.
Out of here, came the burning champagne and satiny butterscotch ribbons of the hit “Josslyn.” Her voice is the head of a lagoon siren’s laughter-loving melodies, orange-blossom-marmalade angelic 808 drums and piano keys, and night-blooming blackberry-blues bass and violin-like strings as ethereal as they are venomous, that could tie even the bravest sailor to the bow. (The formal B-side “Was It All In My Head,” approaching the dark phantom of memory – of love’s death and why love’s wings burn, of truth and what happens when you’re the only one who sees your truth as true – with this aural posture.) O’Brien’s Renaissance painter’s eye soon began pursuing, in her very own way, the twin-sister genres of starry-sparkling McBling princess-pop and volatile cherry bomb-and-silky black orchid pop-punk, this first project taking place on 2020’s “Now” (sticky molasses drums, yellow buttercream-synth beats, blueberry jam-bass and angel-wing chords) and 2021’s “Bitch Back” with Fletcher (whipped cream piano keys, strawberry-honey electric guitars, bejeweled harmonies and bassy chords). On her second album, finally gifted the will to touch her rage and scars in her wished-for genre of raw punk, she chose to dig her nails into where these hurts lie. Puncturing one of her first loves, Olivia fires the arrows of Hestia even further into the isolation from her roots, home, true self and most heartbreakingly, mother; the barrel of the gun of love, lost time after time, having found no lesson of redemption; the ending of a dream, or what happens when a childhood dream dies. “Call Mom” lovingly ties childhood’s lace ribbon (silky red velvet-singing, a picking petals’ drumbeat) around the Los Angeleno desert’s cracked lightning like a tourniquet (silvery-thundering electric guitar and bass). “I Don’t Need No More Friends” with Oli Sykes richens this second pursuit – matter-of-factly, the body of this second album – into a shortcake of blood and guts – a scorching crimson mirage with duelling electric guitars of Zeus’, Spanish-golden bass-drums and cymbals, and buttercream-frosted satiny-screaming vocals. “What Happens Next?,” this 2021 album’s closing track, signals a shift in her songwriting, as a result of her place in her spiritual path, and, reflected in the music – from a rifle, to a tonic and a shield, blue-hydrangea progressions, apple blossom-and-burnt maple notes and chords, and Orion’s belt shining.
Her hands covered in scrapes from confronting, lyrically and aurally, what she could prior, truly only tear back the outermost layers of, O’Brien has begun wielding a dagger in the right hand, and knitting lace butterflies with a left hand’s needle and thread, for her own healing. “Gone Girl” is a mother’s treasured recipe of lavender angel-food cake (delicate sugary synths and piano keys, fae-ballerina harmonies), and “I Should Have F***** Your Brother,” counter to the cheek-dimpled name, composes an earthy, mandarin-nectar olive-oil cake decoratively topped with olive-green pistachios (ethereal guitars, rustic, gritty and truthful vocals). Leading in to her latest, “Blip,” “Bandaid On A Bullethole” fleshes out the last of the blood and guts Olivia has held on to, rose-lily-delicate salt kissing Hestia’s breath upon the beach, harp-like strings and melodies, and dreamy, whimsical harmonies and vocals, handling such a matter.
“Blip,” a 2024 springtime release, is an elegant Art Nouveau composition – with the effervescence of golden champagne, and the age, looking glass, and refraction of cognac. Her time in Hollywood – a world that demands and causes, growing up, very quickly – has given her the time to figure out what is dark of humanity; from lemons, making velvety, tart, apricot-nectared lemonade. With “Blip” O’Brien braids in novel strings to her 2023 gilded turn to a maturer sound, and perspective; of the latter matter, the heart’s shattering is understood as the life lessons that can be taught, the young singer-songwriter seeing the brutal truth of her place in the world of the one that she loves. Olivia believed that a home and a quaint pastoral cottage in summer, wedding bands and two rocking chairs, rose bouquets and someday, baby shoes, would be theirs. Yet, the songwriter seeks and finds knowledge in the fractals of this love, and approaches the reasons for the pair’s falling out with empathy – growing from this shattering, with forgiveness.
Heart-wrenchingly soulful bluesy electric guitar drawing on the legacy of 1950s Delta rhythm and blues, makes up the heartbeat of the single. Sorrow of this bassy plum-violet aural sense, bends in to a closing flower. This guitar is velvety, but not primped of any thorns. “Blip” expresses tragedy with fluttering baby-blue-silk curtain-strings, somber in their cooling golden-baked sugar cookie-sweetness. These strings, backed up by warm drums, like home-baked blueberry muffins iced by a mother’s hand, with blankets of a buttercream glaze. O’Brien’s singing adopts the rose champagne-nursed and oleander-smoky sense of a betrayed house-wife in finger-wave curls, pearl necklace, and sapphire tears. Her queenly siren-eyes, inky-black with forlorn. Fragile tragedy is evoked by harmonies as soft as heart-shaped cushions, that break like seashells. Diamonds’ stolen twinkles are captured in frosted, moth-wing synths that further layer to “Blip’s” articulation of heartache. The faintest chapel bells, light and delicate as a snow-white-silk-sleeve torn off, reminds of a wedding. The tension between the opulent heavenly dominating aspects, and the grittier pained bluesy elements – each, with notes of amber-brown sugar – achieves the smouldering honey and long-charcoaled, satiny ruby-red rose petals of a Southern Gothic. And yet, the welding of the two forms a garden of baby pink, lavender, butter-yellow and cream-white forget-me-nots: an olive branch, or rather, an olive tree.
Accompanying “blip,” O’Brien has released “glimpse of me.” She will be releasing the album love and limerence on June 21st. Pre-save or pre-add love and limerence
