Feb 09, 2023
By Caleb Campbell
Welsh singer/songwriter Rona Mac debuted in 2020 with the textured lo-fi indie folk of her first full-length effort, Sheelah. Recorded, produced, and mixed in her caravan home studio, Mac’s debut was a rugged and unadorned effort, yet also one that evoked gorgeous pastoral expanses and crackled with alluring energy. Last year, Mac returned with her latest EP, Shades Of Ham, and began teasing her next release, sharing a pair of new singles, “Pennies” and “In Your Eyes.” Today, she’s back with another new single, “Sense,” premiering early with Under the Radar.
“Sense” is a smoky and reflective effort, stripping back Mac’s songwriting to its plaintive resonant core. Mac’s vocals sigh above a bed of meditative finger-picked guitar and sonorous keys, aching with the weight of a vulnerable confessional or a melancholic reverie. As the song winds onward Mac settles into the intimate production, even briefly exiting the song as a gorgeous piano interlude takes to the fore. In these moments, Mac says even more with melody than she does with words, letting her lyrics echo in the mind of the listener: “My vision’s cracked and broken / Nothing left to hold on to / My mother lost her senses / Please excuse my absences.”
Mac says of the track, “‘Mental health’ is a phrase we often toss around to make ourselves feel sane, to make things seem ok. In the last couple years, I’ve watched what true insanity can do to people, how many lives it effects, how dark and simultaneously hysterical it can become, and how it can be terminal all too often. It has played a very bold part in my life thus far, and I don’t see that ending any time soon. This next body of work is themed around mental health, and this first track says it most blatantly. ‘Sense’ – what happens when we lose it? How does that feel? How do you hold someone who has lost it? And how long can that go on for?”
Check out the song early below, out everywhere tomorrow, February 10th.