Thyla – “Candy”

Thyla – “Candy”

The tension between Thyla’s dream-pop fluorescence and their churning post-punk gloom defines the young band’s sound. The Brighton act has been tinkering with this tension for a few years now, refining it along the way. We named them a Band To Watch this May and debuted their grunge-heavy single “Blame,” which they followed up with the equally moody “I Was Biting.” Now, after a steady stream of one-offs, Thyla has finally announced plans for a debut EP and shared its lead single “Candy.”

Beginning with slow, bright strumming, frontwoman Millie Duthie murmurs, “My teeth fall out in my dreams/ What does it mean?” with a gentleness totally mismatched with the grim anxiety of the lyric. The guitars grow heavier and juicier as the song mounts: “Like meat they smell, they rot in my mouth/ what does it feel like?… I’ve been told that some things should make a person shiver/ like candy on my tongue.” Unlike the satisfying ferocity of Thyla’s hardest tracks, “Candy” is filled with an uncomfortable, itchy mania that match the paranoid headspace it explores. It swells from woozy verses into crashing choruses, relaxing just as quickly again while tendrils of distortion drift beyond the song’s crests, infecting the whole track with an eerie, buzzing undertone.

“Candy” implants you head-first into a type of morbid anxiety, in which the ugly in everything is illuminated, and it feels like anything sweet must really be rotten on the inside. Thyla offers us just one glimpse of catharsis, treating us to Duthie’s powerful wail as she attempts to ward off demons, yelling over and over again: “Get away from me/ Get away/ Get out/ Get out/ Get out.”

The band explains: “You know when you have impending doom and you have no idea why because there’s nothing specifically wrong that you can put your finger on, and your dreams are messed up, and when you wake up you wonder what they mean? That’s what ‘Candy’ is about.”

For now all we know about the EP is that it’s out in January and “Candy” is on it. Listen below.

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