Listen to “Sink In” by Tirzah
Tirzah’s experimental music evokes a dream half-remembered, a place where the atmosphere is unsettled and hazy with abstraction. An isolated guitar line or an R&B backbeat might create a sense of familiarity, but it’s snarled in fractured production and driven by a murmuring voice that digs bone-deep. On the new single “Sink In,” the UK artist again builds these spare elements into an overwhelming whole. Co-written with frequent collaborators Coby Sey and Mica Levi (Levi also produced), the song’s staggered drums and Prince-ly electric guitar push away from each other in a fragmented yet calculated rhythm. “Come a little closer to me now,” Tirzah beckons, but the call for intimacy is quickly complicated by self-doubt: “Gonna love myself, gonna trust again, gonna show that I’m okay.” Her admission echoes and then trails off, expressing both hesitancy to be hurt and the excitement of falling head-first in love. “Sink In” orbits that uneasy path toward commitment in restless fashion, a mental push-and-pull that becomes achingly tender in Tirzah’s voice.