Paris-born electric pop artist Ethel and Grammy-winning producer Banshee The Great have continued their creative collaboration with their new pop song “Sorted.” With elements of bedroom pop and 90s synth pop, the song is an easy playlist addition for lovers of Clairo, Mamaii and Wallows.
The synth-pop song starts with folic sounds of a street before a 90s-inspired large, fuzzed-out synth kicks in. The intro gives a good sense of the song’s overall tone with a focus on fun synth work with tight drums in the background.
In the first verse, a simple electric keyboard takes up the mix along with a sharp snare and hi-hat. Other instrumentation decorates it sporadically, with a cow bell and string-like synths giving a nice tension to the end of the verse. One issue in “Sorted” is the acoustic guitar in the second verse that takes up most of the mix. While the instrument does sound nice, it’s out of place in the mainly electronic song and its heavy presence only emphasises this displacement. But overall, the synth work in “Sorted” is definitely the highlight, with Banshee The Great knowing how to fill up a mix with contrasting but complementary textures and sounds.
Ethel’s lyricism in this song sounds like sporadic memories tied together by a singular feeling of change and uncertainty. She starts the first verse with “I don’t know where to go / I can feel like there’s something here,” giving a sense of indecision with which the song soon starts to go into more detail. Each phrase is a vignette of a different day-to-day moment, from “winter break” to “dropped my headphones at the station.” The focus of this song is clearly on the instrumentation, so the spotty and irregular lyricism goes largely unnoticed.
Ethel and Banshee The Great’s latest collaboration sees a growing familiarity between the two artists as their sound and identity starts to fully take form. If you want to hear “Sorted” live, Ethel is about to embark on a European and UK tour with shows in Belgium, the Netherlands and England. More information on tickets can be found here.
