MESSY: The one About Olivia Dean
Messy is a perfect album and unlike its name, it’s anything but. The 12 song debut from Olivia Dean is one of my favourite releases from last year and it’s still standing strong. Dean has described this as an album free of rules. As such, its songs take on different genres and reveal something different with each track. Messy is both a sweet sweet contradiction and an affirming body of work.
Waxing lyrical, the album feels like going through the seasons. The orange haze of autumn days fading into the cold iciness of winter. But as it does, the sun comes out, the flowers bloom, spring comes anew and summer makes life worth living again. This is reflected in the tracks themselves which embody the highs and lows of changes. In Dive, a jazzy upstart about the vulnerability of love, Dean captures the unease to ease transition of romantic relationships. Twitter conversations could never because in this nuanced take, she explores the anxious dynamic of loving or caring more and struggling to express emotions ‘It isn’t working / I’m a tidal wave of question marks’ (she’s just like me!). This contrasts with the other party who she sees as ‘just surfing’ and having a much easier time of it. The song doesn’t dwell on these worries though and instead, the majority of the tracks follows her decision to just go all in ‘Maybe it's the fact that every time I fall, I lose it all / But you got me from my head to my feet / And I'm ready to dive’. Similar sentiments are also expressed on Danger.
Ladies Room on the other hand reiterates what Destiny’s Children told us long ago on Jumpin Jumpin and Bug-A-Boo. Here Dean speaks to a lover about trust and independence in a relationship. She manages to lay boundaries that assert her autonomy ‘don’t ever, don’t do that with me’ while reassuring her partner (insanely healthy, well done girl) ‘darling, you still belong to me’. It also speaks to the fun and female camaraderie of toilets on a night out ‘trying to lose my head, so good I forget.’
Like Bella in New Moon, heartbreak does its big one and devastates on No Man. The loss of safety and comfort is gone as she repeats on each verse ‘nothing, no hands, no man for me.’ Sad as it is, the teasing tiptoed tempo also reminds me of how songs about heartbreak also encourage you to get up and dance. This changes on Dangerously Easy as Dean speaks of watching a lover move on sooner and with seemingly more ease. ‘You make it look easy / dangerously easy’ she sings to the other who has carried on romantically (‘she's probably the one / gets on so well with your Mum’), professionally, with ‘a job you don't hate’ and the final emotional blow - ‘this happiness suits you’. Dean questions the isolation of being left behind and struggling to move on, ‘old flame, where do I get something true? / what have I got to do to make it look easy?’
What I particularly love about this song is its imagery. It reminds me of one of my absolute favourite passages from Call Me By Your Name which works quite well here as a response to the song’s outro.
‘Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better […] but to feel nothing so as not to feel anything- what a waste!’
On The Hardest Part, Olivia says there’s no spinning blocks here and chooses the ‘I gotta put me first' route instead. On this track Dean sings ‘even if I could, wouldn't go back where we started / I know you're still waiting, wondering where my heart is’. The Hardest Part values honesty over ease and what ifs. The choice wording on this - ‘pray that things won't change, but the hardest part is / you're realising maybe I, maybe I ain't the same/ and what you're waiting for ain't there no more anyway’ - lends itself pretty well to this Past Lives scene and I really love what both the song and movie have to say about managing expectations and dropping delulu to focus on the real and present.
On I Could Be A Florist the album trails into a pleasant pause. Personally, the song feels like the first day of spring and serves as an almost interlude with a track run time of 1 minute, 20 seconds. I Could Be A Florist feels like ‘in another life I would have loved doing laundry and taxes with you.’ The simple ease of a vocation that serves others, ‘that littlе somethin' missin', can't miss it, I'll fix it / I'm open every day’ is the The Bear’s Forks episode without the intensity but solely the joy of Richie’s development.
Trying to make the shapes you're dying to see
Always kept it tidy
Never really know the right shape to be
And we’ve arrived at Messy which is well and truly my favourite song on the album. Messy feels like the most believable version of it will be okay. It’s such a reassuring and carefully crafted song about the magnitude of living and the smallness of errors in the grand scheme of things. ‘It goes, you can let it / It's okay to regret it: I'm on your side’. Here everything random, curious, regretful, hopeful, is all laid out easily and sweetly. It truly feels like an embodiment of what it means to come home to yourself. To create space and give grace to all moments and facets of your being. The song is crying to your loved ones, comforted by a back rub, stroked head, warm embrace and careful affirmations we all need. Messy reminds us there is so much change constant happening to us at all times.
Don't need to be ready
It’s okay if it's messy
I'm on your side
The same sentiment flows into Everybody’s Crazy ‘under the table, squeeze my hand / I need to know you understand / as I've been thinking lately / everybody's crazy’. The album comes to a warm and upbeat end with Carmen, ‘a love letter to my granny and an ode to the wind rush generation.’ And on this colourful note, summer bursts forth.
I’ve written about Arlo Parks and Rachel Chinouriri and the softness of their music. It makes sense then that I discovered Dean through the latter and a curated playlist by Anoushka (thank you, I love you).
Olivia Dean joins the ranks of music I imagine sleeping on clouds sounds like. It’s maybe a corny descriptor but it’s also really sweet. Messy is a manifestation of be who you are, in your entirety, flaws, warts and all and it can and will still work out and be okay for you.
Call Me By Your Name Excerpts
