Screaming into the void offers a specific type of liberation, and on her scorching new single "Uh Oh", Melbourne indie artist Romanie transforms that sort of unvarnished release into scrawling, gutsy alt-rock joy.
Released now through Community Music, "Uh Oh" is her first offering since her critically lauded 2023 debut album, and it lands like a deep exhale after you've held your breath through some of life's most difficult passages.
Conceived in a time of personal turmoil, health scares, gestures of homesickness, and the emotional detritus that accompanies them, "Uh Oh" finds Romanie at her most natural and vital. Co-written in a few hours with a friend and collaborator, Hamish Mitchell, the song developed from a dark place into a live staple and now, a full-bodied studio recording that captures that same unfiltered urgency. It's just an enjoyable song to play, indeed, you can hear that sense of pleasure pressing against the darker edges. This is a sneer, a scream, and a grit that signify a bold development in Romanie's sound. The scream came towards the end of the track as a joke, but it all sounded right, and she left it. That half-serious, half-liberating moment makes "Uh Oh" hit so hard.
Producer Sam Swain manages to bring Romanie's full live band and their energetic chemistry into the studio for the very first time. The result is a song pulses with the crackling energy of a heaving gig, rough, messy, and indisputably alive.
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