Born in Greece and based in London, Olina arrives with her second EP, *By The Book*, behind her. It was released in January, and it dealt with the dislocation of relocating to a new country in a world that refuses to hold its shape. She has since moved from the cathartic indie rock and soft folk of that record into synth-pop, and the change of palette suits her. Her songwriting always carried a dry, deadpan wit and a filmmaker’s eye for the telling detail. Now it has shimmering, pixel-bright production to play against. Her stated touchstones are Holly Humberstone, Sarah Kinsley and Caroline Polachek, and the company is earned. She shares Humberstone’s gift for the confessional hook, Kinsley’s taste for the cinematic, and a little of Polachek’s willingness to let a melody wander somewhere unexpected before bringing it home.<\/p>
The lyric sets out its stall early. Thoughts that won’t settle are rendered as glitching, floating pixels, and the fields she longs to run through have been replaced by something colder and more architectural, all hard surfaces and biometric doors. It is a witty image, and a bleak one, and Olina delivers it with the faintly bemused calm of someone narrating her own dream. Then comes the verse that stops you: a sly, sidelong glance at the commodified, performance-ready fantasy of the modern body, sung with enough arch detachment that the satire lands cleanly. She is a lyricist who understands that the sharpest critique is usually the quietest.<\/p>
The chorus is where the song opens its chest. Its plea for stillness is repeated like a mantra, and the hook has the clean, aching lift that synth-pop does best, the sound of someone reaching for something real through layers of glass. Her voice carries the whole thing. It is warm and unshowy, with enough grain in it to keep the digital sheen honest. The irony is delicious: a song about longing for quiet is built from music that glitters and pulses, and the tension between the two is the engine of the record. You can dance to a song about dissociation and feel, at the same time, a little less alone with it.<\/span><\/p> It is also a song with a shape. The bridge slows the pulse and lets doubt in, with its talk of fate, of hope slipping, of what might be left to call your own. It turns the track from a clever commentary into something with a heartbeat. By the final refrain, the demand to feel life as real, to find grace and fight the simulation, lands with unforced sincerity. Plenty of artists point at the screen and tut. Olina climbs inside it, looks around, and reports back with tenderness.<\/span><\/p> It helps that she arrives with credentials beyond the studio. Her live apprenticeship has taken in The Ned, the Star of Shoreditch and the Amersham Arms, and the song carries the poise of an artist who has learned to hold a room. By day she works in ovarian cancer research, and she runs a jewellery brand on the side. A song about the need for something tangible to hold onto feels written by someone who spends her days at the bench and her nights making objects by hand. <\/span><\/p> “Starstruck Simulation” is not a revolution, and it doesn’t pretend to be. It is something rarer: a pop single with a point of view, a sense of humour and a real ache underneath. If the joysticks are in someone else’s hands, Olina has at least written us a very good soundtrack for the wait.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\nhttps:\/\/olinasworld.com\/<\/a>\n\n\n\n\n
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