Produced by Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Yard Act, Perfume Genius) – ‘So Neurotic’ sways blissfully between jangly indie-pop and self-aware art-pop. A “tongue in cheek ode to anxiety” – as Costelloe describes herself, the track addresses her and her family’s tendencies towards overthinking with a welcoming degree of levity and humour, notably its rapturous chorus “mama’s got it / sister’s got it / grandma’s got it…so neurotic”.

Speaking more on the track’s lyrical inspiration, Alice said: “‘So Neurotic’ was inspired by me chastising myself over not being more like my partner and friends who remain so calm and unflappable in situations that would send me spiralling, and all started by singing the line ‘I wish I, I wish I could be like you’ to myself in the shower. At the time, I was also reading a book about how to stop overthinking and had just read a section about how over worrying/anxious thinking was passed down generationally and was startled and somewhat amused by how obvious this was in my own family and so wanted to explore this idea of the futility of fighting against your own nature.”

For the video for ‘So Neurotic’, Alice enlisted the help of longstanding friends and collaborators with an aim to “visually represent the feeling of being followed around by anxiety; living in a constant dance with your demons.”

“My very talented friend, designer and maker Lauren MacDonald (Working Cloth) created the neurotic creature’s costume using my pretty unhelpful brief of ‘a creature that is menacing and stressful but also a bit cute’ and Alice Roots from female performance company Figs in Wigs worked on choreography and brought the neurotic creature to life.

“My longtime collaborator from Big Deal, Jesse Wong, filmed, directed and edited the video, focusing on imbuing the video with a similar mixture of melancholy and humour present in the track, and bravely took multiple tennis balls to the face in order to get our tennis sequence.”

The post Al Costelloe announces debut solo EP So Neurotic and releases title track & video appeared first on She Makes Music.

She says: “‘California’ deals with saying goodbye to a problematic relationship and the places that were meaningful to it. The song was recorded in London, and my good friend Max Bloom from indie-rock band YUCK helped me to capture the melancholia of a difficult breakup alongside the sunshine tinged feeling of Southern California.”

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