Catherine Elms’s eccentric sonic forays never fail in capturing my imagination with their novelty. Since my introduction to her music on 2022’s album I Have Seen It, I Do Not Fear It, I’ve been greatly interested in her dark and eerie output, and ‘Medusa’ is the latest chapter in Elms’s brooding and venomous catalog.
A British singer and songwriter, Catherine Elms is based in Swansea and is a rapidly rising name in the South Wales music scene. The alternative rock artist, known for her melodic and brooding sound, Catherine Elms is a master in atmospheric song building and outstanding instrumental palettes that eerily blend with her melodic vocal deliveries, straddling the line between gentle, creeping, witchy, and utterly manic and bewitched.
In ‘Medusa’, easily one of Elms’s more instrumentally and melodically dark offerings to date, Elms’s presence remains largely collected throughout the song, grounding the heavy song even deeper into a rumbling, earth-shaking groove. Defined by the bass-heavy piano riff, a page seemingly taken straight from Talk Talk’s ‘Life’s What You Make It’, ‘Medusa’ trudges onward with an unsettling charisma. Slow, composed, and utterly terrifying, ‘Medusa’ is a dramatic song with memorable melodies that will sit with me for a while.
Inventive, colorful, and lovingly crafted with an edge and an unquestionable personality unique to Elms, ‘Medusa’ is a welcome addition to the Welsh alternative witch we’ve come to know and love.
