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Up-and-coming indie songstress Arlo Day has unveiled the bleak and enchanting “This Love,” the second track from her debut EP Bad Timing, set for release May 31. Newly signed to Domino Recording Company, a British independent label with artists including the Arctic Monkey and Animal Collective under its wings, Day sings of the uncertain anxiety of an unhealthy relationship in “This Love.”
“I wrote this song at a turbulent time in my life,” says Arlo Day, aka Alice Barlow, in a statement. “It’s about an unhealthy kind of love with someone you know isn’t good for you, and trying to protect yourself from pain even though it may be inevitable.”
Muted and tender, the song is interspersed with barely whispered back-up vocals, haunting vocalizations and gently rolling guitar tones. But it’s the lyrics, soft and open, yet tinged with a quiet, detached anger, that stand out most. Day’s words dissect the emotional exhaustion of a turbulent love and capture the fear swelling under the calmness of her even voice.
“This love, it won’t do,” she sings. “I don’t want to be a part of it.” But the draw of the stormy relationship she compares to a drug proves too much to fully evade. “I wish I didn’t want to be a part of it,” she finishes before the guitar fades out.
Arlo Day will perform at an EP launch show at Bermondsey Social Club in London on June 6. Her full U.K. tour schedule can be found on her Facebook page.
Listen to “This Love” below.