“Roach” is Miya Folick’s clearest and most direct work yet, eschewing some of the lyrical and musical obfuscations she layered onto her 2018 debut album, “Premonitions”. With ear-worm melodies, heart-wrenching poetry, eclectic production and anchored by Folick’s once-in-a-lifetime voice, “Roach” straddles a line between pop and something more experimental. She enlisted a team of collaborators who she trusted to bring out the grittier side of her artistry, including Gabe Wax (War on Drugs, Fleet Foxes), Mike Malchicoff (King Princess, Bo Burnham), Max Hershenow (MS MR) and a team of some of LA’s best players. The result is an album that sounds as honest and intimate as the subject matter at hand, a candid snapshot of where she is now and what it took to get there.
As discussed last month when “Mommy” dropped, at this point well over half of the songs on the new Miya Folick album “Roach” have been released as singles. The infestation continues but these tracks have been consistently solid. The latest track, “So Clear,” is an effervescent pop tune built around a percolating synth line, with Folick exulting in a moment of epiphany: “Ten thousand days of waking up/ I pull myself out of the dust/ I’m sun and sea, so suddenly/ So clear to me, so clear to me.
It’s an album about trying to get to the core of what life really is. I think over the course of writing this record, I actually did the work and got closer to the person that I really want to be, even if that path isn’t linear and I still have moments where I disappoint myself, where I’m angry with myself.
released May 26th, 2023
The Fat Angel Sings 