‘Um’ is a debut album that can only come from someone constantly building themselves up. Martha Skye Murphy creates a textural, lyrical, and melodic exploration where the intimate and the rough blur into an overwhelming stasis, yet have enough space to showcase a striking vulnerable core underneath the surface.
Even within a continuously building catalog, Martha Skye Murphy’s experimentation as an artist is something worth observing. Amidst the EPs that she has released, the curiosity to dig deeper within textures and melodies that will fracture and mend, vocal tangents that shimmer and wail, and writing that rungs into obscure poetic details have eventually allowed her to collaborate with other acts - most notably Nick Cave, Maxwell Sterling, and Squid - that only allow her voice to echo even further, where her constant experiences as an artist have enticed listeners to her riveting presence. Thus, after some singles get pushed out for the last couple of months, ‘Um’ serves as a debut album from someone who has kept on exploring the depths of their skillset that’s been built for dozens of years now.
Within the soundscape of ‘Um’, Martha Skye Murphy essentially puts out an assured version of what she has been carving for the past few years, as there’s a focus on wrapping herself around a blend of haunting ambiance and shambling electronics that have been Martha Skye Murphy’s bread and butter. Her voice knits itself around those tonal contrasts of beauty and disturbance, always carrying an extravagant strength that never breaks on those soundscapes, instead becoming a natural home to them. This positions a majority of the songs within a strikingly alluring quality strengthened further with their strong melodic structures, Ethan P. Flynn co-production assists, as well as instrumental work from Martha Skye Murphy and others - ‘Need’ and ‘Kind’ carries layers of vocalizations and harmonies through gleaming pianos, solemn guitar passages, and array of electronic embellishments that overwhelms the entire mix yet never overshadow the vocals that eventually gets more intense as the songs go further, ‘Pick Yourself Up’ brings a sense of curious tone to the song as the melodies from the barrage of instrumentation and vocals careen freely - essentially creating a sort of English Folk cut with an experimental take from the modern times, ‘Theme Parks’ with its bare synth waves, shackling drums, and airy woodwinds accents instills the hushed vocals into an oddly meditative atmosphere, ‘Spray Can’ with its hammering assortment of drums, pianos, and synths doubles down on bringing an immense textural and melodic experience with Martha Skye Murphy’s vocals keeping it all together, ‘IRL’ with its composed melodic structure comprised of gentle keys, shuffling drums, and angelic vocal harmonies that builds up to a guitar rambling climax before the pretty albeit glitched out piano lines lead off to the closing instrumental passage ‘Forgive’, where claire rousay’s insertion of field recordings and faint percussions adds a layer of distant beauty to the wistful horns, pianos, and vocal coos. It might not exactly work all the way through as the mix can shamble and the brief cuts do not exactly do much within its progressions, yet they manage to keep the momentum of the album structure amidst that fraught assembly of textural and melodic tones.
For as much as the album title implies a sense of hesitation, it does manage to pull together an arc where the poetry with its fascinating phrases might come off strange, but does manage to paint enough details that create more definition of this arc. Starting off with a sense of romantic longing that soon turns melancholy as the protagonist and their partner soon feel a sense of sadness, which only affects the protagonist with their general surroundings and endeavors. As described in ‘Spray Can’, it eventually makes the protagonist go to savannahs and casinos without thinking, embracing mundanity and silence that comes from the sadness that they’re carrying, and most importantly, losing the words within the songs that they write. It’s a lyrical detail that actually follows through for the rest couple of the songs, with the writing slowly losing its coherent structure and relying on cut-throat phrasings and repetition, even to the point of using non-verbal syllables to fill up a song. Yet the coherent does come back for ‘IRL’, where the sadness doesn’t remain anymore as time becomes the essence of regaining back the strength the protagonist needs, allowing the sense of longing to be back on the table once more, even if it never outright shows whether or not the longing for love has been reciprocated once more despite being followed up with the closing track ‘Forgive’.
Although there is a sense of distraction and obfuscation nestled within the writing, the production, and even on parts of the presentation, there are still enough details on ‘Um’ that can clear the mist away and allow enough parts of the emotive core to be seen and heard. It shows the focus, dexterity, and creativity that Martha Skye Murphy has devoted to this debut album, bringing in vulnerable intimacy and shambling alienation that makes for an enthralling project through and through, as long as you have the profound interest to dive deep and find what could be found within its deeply towering sonic spaces. There might be hesitation that overwhelms you at first, but with enough patience and consideration, the nuance and beauty will flow out in the open.
Favorite Tracks: ‘Need’, ‘Pick Yourself Up’, ‘Theme Parks’, ‘Spray Can’, ‘Kind’, ‘IRL’, ‘Forgive’
Least Favorite Track: ‘Dust Yourself Off’