Good indie rock knows none of the limits its commercialized counterpart does, and it’s impossible for any critic to deny as much when listening to a song like Izzy Outerspace’s “Throw Me into the Pool.” In this single and its music video, Izzy Outerspace delicately straddles the line between psychedelic pop and a punkish variety of folk that is both emotionally unguarded and stinging at the same time. One is inclined to call this piece a Mazzy Star-like sound for a new generation, but to me, it’s just too unique for comparisons to any other act in recent alternative rock history.
Everything is out in the open here, starting with the feelings our singer is hoisting up from beneath a blanket of tense melodicism. Her words bleed into the fabric of the guitar strings rather seamlessly, but this isn’t because the vocal doesn’t have its own space in the mix. When there’s this kind of passion in an arrangement, every element of the music begins to form a collective push as big and strong as any tornado-force wind. We’re left directly in its path, and to our great fortune, Izzy Outerspace doesn’t step in between right at the last minute.
Listen to “Throw Me into the Pool” below
The guitar in this single is as important a contributor to the narrative as the singing is if not just a bit more in a couple of key moments we find just ahead of the halfway point in the song. By creating a pendulous discord between the pace of the verse and that of the strings, we’re always waiting for the lumbering tempo to pick up and release something cathartic and freeing – but such a moment never comes. We’re lost in the chaos of complete isolation, and it’s a state somehow created with movement rather than standstill melodies.
Izzy Outerspace probably could have chucked a little more bass into the bottom-end of this mix and sustained more muscularity coming into the finish line, but I can also appreciate her wanting to keep this track rather stripped-down and free of any unnecessary weight. She isn’t trying to prove herself as a studio player; she’s actually putting something out there for us to absorb lyrically, with the melodic framework serving as so much more than just a simple example of what she can conjure up at the tap of a finger. Shortcuts are for her rivals – this is a player who likes to get her hands dirty.
Among the summer’s most curious sophomoric efforts, I have found Izzy Outerspace’s “Throw Me into the Pool” to be one of the few must-listens of the lot by leaps and bounds. Instead of just expanding on the identity of her first album in this latest release, she’s actually looking deeper into the roots of her artistic concept, thus delivering us something that sounds both fuller and wiser in comparison to anything she’s recorded before. I love what she’s doing for the international indie rock beat, and hopefully, I’ll have the chance to see her do it in person sooner than later.
