Switch On The Light

Grace Ives “Neither You Nor I”

Grace Ives is a musical shape shifter, but her shape only shifts so much. Her voice and palette is consistent, but her songwriting mostly comes across as her writing her own version of “types” of songs. And it’s rarely obvious archetypes or particular popular songs. She’s a little more esoteric, like she’s trying to create a vision of pop that’s exclusively the sort of interesting non-hits that have been filling out pop records for a few decades now.

“Neither You Nor I” has the unmistakable feel of a trip hop-adjacent track circa 2000-2003. It’s mostly in the sound of the central loop, which has the semi-ironic cosmopolitan vibe of so many samples from that period. There is no credited sample in this song, which either means the label is being cagey about clearances or that Ives, John DeBold, and Ariel Rechtshaid created it from scratch. I would love for it to be the latter – it’d be the musical equivalent of people who bake Oreos from scratch at home.

The Ives-ness of the song comes through in the lyrics, in which she sings somewhat cryptically about a relationship with someone who’s interested in exploring kinks, but can only go so far with it. Which is nice, I guess, because it means they’re on the same page. The word that really stands out to me is “chubby,” which comes up a few times over. (“chubby little knife,” “stab in my chubby side”) It’s an interesting choice – it’s cute and mildly self-effacing, one of the more gentle words for fat, a little sexy for some people – but it’s also directly attached to violence in this context. You can infer a lot of mixed feelings and erotic tension in that juxtaposition.

Buy it from Bandcamp.