With each release from her upcoming debut album ‘How Long Will It Take?’, Nieve Ella keeps us on our toes, pushing her sound in a bold, uncharted direction. Her third single ‘Standing On A Pane Of Glass’ certainly follows this trajectory. Coming after her two previous, equally striking singles - ‘Drive’ and ‘Bite Back’, Ella cements herself as an emerging indie-rock powerhouse.

The track instantly embodies the grungier, heavier sound of Wunderhorse, who the singer cites as her favourite band. The raw-sounding guitar riff which backtracks the song builds up to an explosive crescendo in the chorus, creating an incredibly captivatingly dark sound. The lead guitar, which becomes centre stage, along with the commanding drums, really signifies a strong stylistic evolution for the artist, following her more mellow, bedroom-pop sound heard in her previous songs, such as ‘Glasshouses’.

Ella complements her sonic shift with equally brooding songwriting; she sings “Why does it feel like there's no way out? // Nobody knows that it's got this bad”. Here, she taps into this suffocating feeling of being trapped in one’s own mind, and further juxtaposes this with the release felt with the ferocious guitar work.  

The repetition of the lyrics “down, down don't look” in the bridge shows how Ella fully commits to introspective, unsettling imagery, showing this new, convicted move she has taken in her artistry. This, alongside her sense of self-assuredness in ‘Drive’ and rejection of tenderness in ‘Bite Back’, suggests her debut album, releasing on the 16th of October, will be her most compelling and complex project to date.

Hollie Panrucker 

@holliepanrucker

Image: Yana Van Nuffel

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