Bliss Carmxn puts that fleeting feeling in a bottle on “Caffeine Orange,” a glowing new single that hovers between alt-pop shimmer, folk-inflected intimacy and a gauzy sheen of soft dream pop. It’s a song that stretching and unfurling like light slipping through blinds.
From its very first note, Carmxn’s voice is as though it were a conversation with dawn itself, tender and reflexive and slightly disoriented. Over the top, layered synths glide across like melting clouds, and as that ceaselessly morphing rhythm turns into a heartbeat that is just solid enough to be unbelievably surreal. There’s an undeniable warmth that ripples throughout the track, as if each line was penned under the soothing light of morning coffee and lilac skies.
The single, “Caffeine Orange” is as evocative as it is day to day. This surrealistic storytelling contributes to the song’s cinematic pull, each verse painting an emotional landscape that feels both nostalgic and new. And where others bring complexity and clutter to their sound, she leans on what is literally music’s simplest form, men singing songs with real emotional urgency in the tradition of old balladry. The result is a track that sounds like it feels to stand barefoot in early light, at once grounding and transcendent.
"Caffeine Orange" is one between sleep and wake when everything lights up with an unreal clarity. That Bliss Bragg who performs as Bliss Carmxn has translated that mood to melody suggests a rare emotional intuition and grace in an artist who is likely familiar only to the far edges of the yeehaw agenda.
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