Just Friends is the kind of record that bristles with the kind of emotion that moves with sharp edges. Vocals search for stable ground before seemingly slipping away in a wave of stuttering, wheezing synths and clattering drums. The whole thing creates a sense that the love it depicts could simply evaporate if anyone looks at it too closely. It's fragile, uncertain, nervous and beautiful.
This is the third single from I Am Boleyn, a musician who grew up in St Petersburg before moving to the UK to study History at Oxford University. She now divides her time between London and Stockholm, creating music as she goes, with influences that include Robyn, Mø, MS MR and Goldfrapp.
Depicting the fuzzy grey space that can exist in a relationship that feels somewhere between platonic and romantic, there is a sense of desire and pain that pulses through Just Friends... The fear that something will never happen, coupled with the terror that if it actually does, everything will change. Those tricky friendships can feel like a barbed trap we create - a new, inventive way to inflict pain upon ourselves. It’s dizzying and I feel a little sick, and yet here I am, reaching out to hold your hand...