EERA, aka Anna Lena Bruland, has released her latest glimpse in her highly anticipated new album "I'll Stop When I'm Done," out 26 September on Test Card Recordings, produced by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear. The latest single, "Honey, do you see me?", from the alt-pop singer and songwriter, is a quiet storm, intimate, inquisitive, and striking in approach.
A direct ode to the 1960 Billy Wilder classic The Apartment, it resides in the same bittersweet atmosphere of longing and unsaid truths. There was something about the way they spoke in the film that I loved, and then shaped into lyrics, EERA explains, and you can hear that on every line the feeling of two people treading water close to openness, with its central question Do you see me? Hanging heavy in the room.
Taylor allows the track plenty of room to breathe, warm and restrained. Gentle rhythms leave room for Bruland's voice to stand out, walking the line between strength and fragility. It's a sound that doesn't demand to be heard, it lures you in, much like people lean toward one another to share an intimate confidence.
With "Forget Her" and the album's title track both previously aired on BBC 6 Music earlier this year, "Honey, do you see me?" comes across as the final piece of the puzzle, allowing us to see the whole picture. If those first singles suggested a brand of bold introspection, this one is all intimacy, a midnight conversation, a confession left on the table. "Honey, do you see me?" Opens with a striking tenderness that's not easy to shake. It's EERA at her most exposed and perhaps, even, her most compelling.