May Roosevelt hails from Thessaloniki, Greece and has put out the best pop song I’ve heard in quite some time, “The One With The List”.
May Roosevelt – “The One With The List”
You wouldn’t know it from the dreamy, beautiful synth lines and danceable beat, or the supercute voice singing them, but the lyrics are, as the title states, a long list of what the narrator is frightened of. According to May’s website: “Panda, A Story About Love and Fear is a concept album that narrates a story of a girl that is afraid of almost everything. Will she be able to overcome her weaknesses and embrace the assuring love of a panda or will her fears rule out any chance of happiness?”
Panda begins with a musicbox winding up the momentum for a dolls’ sugary teaparty somewhere out in the ether, as below winter melts into spring. As lovely melodies in gorgeous robes of sound fly about, a bell rings halfway through, as if announcing it is time for the chemicals in the tea to make themselves known. With more mechanical movements, the attendees begin to explore the atmosphere in which they find themselves, and the colours beyond. Soon they awake in the still dream-like aftermath of the party and are left wandering in unfamiliar territory.
May’s second album Haunted is just that. If these are the same characters from Panda, the dolls have now transformed into spirits, thick electric waves of spirit, engaged in a shadowy primal dance. Slowly sliding, with “Vow”, into stately processions that warp the ether. “Dark The Night” begins with a return to the gossamer sound of Panda before weaving itself into the tenebrous tapestry. And soon the ground itself begins to lift as the dance gathers form and speed. This phantasmal floating platform continues through “Mass Extermination” but the dance is breaking down in psychic confusion, its participants’ movements gliding robotic until an entrancing melody comes to breathe life into them again. “Young Night Thought” being the merging of man and machine. Until “Chasm” arrives, giving every indication this could have all been a dream, though once again one awakes in unfamiliar terrain. And joins in a new strange dance for the closing “Outcry”, spectral prisms invading the shadows. I had written these impressions before reading May’s website, each song apparently uses traditional rhythms to represent a different Greek dance.
It is worth noting I found out about May Roosevelt through the Greek Altervative Bands blog, which features some very good bands, including the excellent electropop duo Marsheaux, who I’ve been a fan of for 5 years now.
