Anjalts has kept a steady pace since debuting in 2020, moving from the 15-track Air to Fire through the harder-edged Bluency and into the stripped-back, acoustic-leaning Northern Lights last December. “Through the Fray,” out May 8th, swings back the other way entirely. Working independently under her own IXO Music banner and self-producing as always, she builds this one around a driving synth pulse and up-tempo drum programming, landing somewhere in the retro synth-pop territory of Bowie and Prince while still sounding distinctly like her own thing.
The song has a very unique atmosphere because of where its elements sit in the stereo space; it genuinely sounds like outer space, but there’s a very punchy center to the drum machine sound that keeps it grounded and makes it feel danceable and fun to listen to rather than just cold and atmospheric. Harmonically, it’s surprisingly wholesome, built on a bright tonality that subverts the expectations a title like “Through the Fray” sets up. That contrast- wide, cosmic production wrapped around a warm, major-feeling chord bed- is a big part of why the track works as well on a dance floor as it does as a headphone listen. It’s a balancing act Anjalts pulls off with more confidence here than the moodier tone of her last record might have suggested she still had in her.
Lyrically, the track leans into a hazy, nighttime narrative, a mysterious figure pulling someone up a hillside to dance and drink and briefly escape the weight of ordinary life. The imagery stays cinematic and a little dreamlike throughout, and Anjalts has coined her own term for the space the song sits in, a claustrophobic mashup of tightness and nightmare that captures the anxious undertow beneath all that dance-floor shine. It’s a smart bit of songwriting: existential without tipping into heavy-handedness, weightless without losing substance. With a fourth album already underway for autumn, “Through the Fray” plays like Anjalts testing out a new gear before committing to it fully, and on the evidence here, it suits her.
