Close to final draft of Head Above the Water

Author: willburden

src/components/Bandcamp.astro

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ const { album, tracks = 5 } = Astro.props;
 <style lang="scss">
     @use '../styles/tokens' as *;
 
-    $constant-height: 109px;
+    $constant-height: 110px;
     $height-per-track: 32.8px;
 
     iframe {

src/components/post/Post.astro src/components/Post.astrosrc/components/post/Post.astro renamed to src/components/Post.astro

@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 ---
 import type { InferEntrySchema } from 'astro:content'
 import { Image } from 'astro:assets';
-import * as formatDate from '../../util/formatDate';
-import PostTags from '../PostTags.astro';
-import Aside from '../Aside.astro';
-import Bandcamp from '../Bandcamp.astro';
+import * as formatDate from '../util/formatDate';
+import PostTags from './PostTags.astro';
+import Aside from './Aside.astro';
+import Bandcamp from './Bandcamp.astro';
 
 interface Props {
     data: InferEntrySchema<"posts">;
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ const pubDate = formatDate.verbose(data.pubDate);
 </header>
 
 <style lang="scss">
-    @use '../../styles/_tokens' as *;
+    @use '../styles/_tokens' as *;
 
     header {
         position: relative;

src/components/post/PostHeader.astro src/components/PostHeader.astrosrc/components/post/PostHeader.astro renamed to src/components/PostHeader.astro

@@ -1,10 +1,114 @@
 ---
-title: 'Brigid Mae Power: Head Above the Water'
-pubDate: 2025-12-18
+title: "Strength and vulnerability in Brigid Mae Power’s “Head Above the Water”"
+pubDate: 2026-01-08
 bandcamp:
     album: 1089224786
     tracks: 10
 tags:
     - music
     - review
 ---
+
+*Head Above the Water* was the first album I heard by Brigid Mae Power, and I came across it without any particular connection -- I think it just surfaced from mysterious algorithmic depths. But it’s come to be one of my favourite albums, a reliable go-to for evocative city walks and train journey window-watching. I think part of what’s so compelling about it, and what makes it unique and worth digging into, is the distinctive way Power writes about emotion.
+
+This is a collection of nine original songs, plus a very well-chosen cover of a traditional ballad, ‘The Blacksmith’. The music is dreamy, ruminative folk and country, insistently strummed acoustic guitars reverberating and drifting up into a glittery night sky, swirling with strings and icy piano chords. It’s often repetitious and open-ended, each song having a strong atmosphere but not necessarily a linear journey.
+
+It could all suggest panic, confusion, the chaos of being swept up in a storm, except that Power’s presence as a singer is so grounding. Her voice is strong and bright, and her melodies are ornamented with nimble arpeggios. Many songs contain sections of wordless vocalisation, and, while these do convey a measure of hurt and lostness, the overwhelming effect is of security and a sense of acceptance along with the usual laments.
+
+What I really want to talk about are the lyrics, because they match this vibe completely. Power has a talent for writing about the complexities of human emotion in a way that feels truthful and unpretentious. Her songs explore relationships and personal histories by prodding at small moments -- quick observations, gut reactions, fragments of senses and memories -- and then leveraging these to expose something about the currents below.
+
+For example, the album opens with cheery country song ‘On A City Night’, full of winding pedal steel, in which somebody immediately answers his own question.
+
+> "City lights or country skies at night
+> Which do you prefer?"
+> He said to me, with a smile
+> And eyes so pure
+>
+> Before I could reply, he said
+> "I like the city lights instead
+> Country trees in the night
+> Their shadows give me a fright"
+
+This could be an admiring love song, or it could be a subtle admonition: to my ears, it often sounds like a moment of disconnect, where Power sees her interlocutor as a bit naive and overexcited. Her looking at his “eyes so pure” sounds a little conscious and detached, like she’s not really feeling seen in the conversation. The chorus has Power repeatedly singing “On a city night,” which at first glance suggests a boisterous mood of late-night adventure and whimsy. But maybe there’s a note of irony too, acknowledging that such nights out often also contain a lot of inane, searching conversations and buried feelings.
+
+> I can’t quite believe
+> How easy it’s been for you
+> To let go of everything
+> You previously knew
+>
+> The city suits you
+> The city suits you
+
+This talk of seeing a new side to somebody is, again, potentially double-edged. I will say I think this detachment is just one flavour in the song’s emotional stew, but it’s definitely an interesting, awkward moment for Power to focus on. Maybe she’s exploring an internal struggle felt by her character, as they try to give in to the ideal of a city night but feel a little distant or weighed down.
+
+---
+
+In ‘I Was Named After You’, a song which starts off quite peacefully but builds into a frenzied march, Power names an important contrast.
+
+> I was named after, after you
+> Oh, where’s the strength
+> That I’m meant to get from you
+> Or did you deal it out
+> In its other form -- vulnerability?
+> Of that I have plenty
+
+Strength and vulnerability, here, are two forms of the same material. This is a duality that I think fundamentally characterises Power’s music, as much of its emotional heft comes from showing the close association between the two ideas. Each requires and cultivates the other -- to be vulnerable you need the courage to risk embarrassment or pain, and to be strong you need to know yourself, to be aware and in control of your flaws. Power’s lyrics are urgently, ardently vulnerable; they have the intensity of someone who really needs to be heard and understood.
+
+I think this is best exemplified in the brilliant song ‘I Had To Keep My Circle Small’. It’s a song about a breakup of some sort, a relationship where the speaker has had to distance themselves, and it’s both tragic, in exploring the pain and the problems that caused this parting, and at the same time empowering. Power’s character has fought for herself, has carved out the space that she needs, and she isn’t regretting that it happened, but explaining why it had to.
+
+> I had to keep my circle small
+> Neutrality, I just could not afford
+> I needed a team
+> I needed a team
+> That is not a bad thing at all
+
+Spread out across the course of the song are all of the things that Power tells us she needed but didn’t have:
+
+> I needed a team
+> I needed you to favour me
+> I needed partiality
+> I needed you to see me
+
+I love this list of needs: the earnestness of wanting a team, the delicate specificity of wanting to be seen. And most of all the need to be favoured, to be treated with partiality. I think that’s a wonderful and honest thing to ask for from someone. It’s also so universal -- I think these lines could describe the fundamental needs behind practically any relationship breakdown anyone’s been through. It’s almost like a version of the Ho’oponopono forgiveness prayer\* but for breakups.
+
+The past tense gives it a feeling of emotional litigation, like a case is being made after the fact. All of these things may no longer be strictly useful to anyone, they may only refer to a defunct relationship, but it’s important somehow that the detail of what happened is told. One of the great things here is how Power makes a value of precision. Just the sheer syllable count of “partiality” feels metrically improbable, but in Power’s songwriting voice such a bulky word sounds natural because it’s the right word for how she feels (and she actually ends up adding a few more syllables of vocal flourish).
+
+After each need, she emphasises that it’s “not a bad thing at all”. This is the radical strength that Power shows comes from vulnerablity. Being vulnerable allows you to assert and stand by the things you know about yourself with certainty. Power does that in all of her songs. As much as the music is often sad, it’s not self-pitying. It’s confident in its sadness, and pushes to be heard, understood, and respected.
+
+\* “I love you. Thank you. I forgive you. Please forgive me.” A Hawaiian ritual for reconciliation that I learned about from the movie *The Meyerowitz Stories*, where it’s used in a context of bereavement.
+
+---
+
+The album ends with its title track, ‘Head Above the Water’. It’s a floaty ending song, free of percussion, but emotionally very charged. It’s tense, with the subtle rattling texture of the Mellotron reminding me of a low rustling wind that might be about to pick up. Over this plays a light, fluttering piano, a touch staccato and clumsy. You can hear the keys being pressed. Later a lonely string part doubles the melody, seeming to call across a great distance. It’s momentous, like a crucial few minutes of silence before a big change.
+
+The minimal arrangement gives Power full room to scythe up and down through the tense air. She sings lines that feel cleared of the slight cynicism or resentment of some of the other songs; this one feels deeply earnest.
+
+> “Head above the water”
+> That’s what you sound like to me
+> Looking across to the shore
+> I wish you luck with your
+> Losses from before
+>
+> You remind me of someone else
+> He has a pain that can’t be helped
+> But still his eyes go on and on
+> His sense of what matters
+> Is really, really strong
+
+There’s actually a bit of a meandering quality to these verses. They don’t seem to have one clear overarching point. It’s like Power’s character has released a little of her grip on the hard principles she was defending in ‘I Had To Keep My Circle Small’. There’s less of that tone of litigation; it sounds more exhausted. It’s like she’s let go of any anger and is just sharing some unfiltered feelings with the “you” in the song.
+
+And in these unfiltered ideas, the speaker seems to find some common ground with her addressee. She says that she can see their “pain that can’t be helped”. The titular image of one’s “head above the water,” when it finally comes here at the end of the album, doesn’t refer to Power’s own struggle but that of the other person. It could be a recognition that when someone lashes out, it’s often more about their own pain and fear, an attempt to stay afloat.
+
+The first verse is repeated at the end, meaning the final words are that blessing and implicit goodbye: “I wish you luck with your losses from before.” This ending to me is a beautiful, reconciliatory balancing note to the quiet anger laced through the other songs. The instrumental drifts on, with the same melody sung in a ghostly whistle, and then it comes to a stop. It’s a moment of resolution that doesn’t negate the pain and searching found elsewhere in the album.
+
+In wishing luck with past losses, Power invokes the idea that our pasts are something we have to live with, and that it can be an ongoing battle. But she sounds hopeful. It’s a particular version of peace or happiness, an optimism that we can learn to be comfortable with our pasts, our pain, and our vulnerability, and still get to know and enjoy our strength.
+
+---
+
+## Endnotes
+
+I went to see Brigid Mae Power performing live in Newcastle! It was completely captivating and I have to reiterate that she is such a brilliant singer. She played guitar, with Ruth Clinton of Landless providing Mellotron and backing vocals, and their harmonising was incredible. Anyway, needless to say, I enjoyed it very much.
+
+I also got this T-shirt that Power painted!
+
+\[Include pic of shirt\]

src/content/media/acoustic-guitar.jpg

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 import type { GetStaticPaths } from "astro";
 import { getCollection, type CollectionEntry } from "astro:content";
 import BaseLayout from "../../layouts/BaseLayout.astro";
-import BlogPost from "../../components/post/Post.astro";
+import BlogPost from "../../components/Post.astro";
 
 interface Props {
     post: CollectionEntry<"posts">;

src/content/media/aldous-harding-party-cover.jpg

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
     font-size: $size-md;
 }
 
-h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p {
+h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote {
     @include margin-between($space-md);
 }
 
@@ -56,3 +56,24 @@ img {
     border-radius: $border-radius;
     box-shadow: 0 $shadow-offset $shadow-blur $color-subtle;
 }
+
+ul, blockquote {
+    margin-inline: 0;
+    padding-inline: $space-lg;
+}
+
+blockquote {
+    @include font-technical;
+
+    p {
+        white-space: pre;
+    }
+}
+
+hr {
+    margin-block: $space-lg;
+    height: $border-thickness;
+    border: none;
+    background-color: $color-subtle;
+    width: 25%;
+}