Maddie Ashman – Amber
Maddie Ashman doesn’t waste time on “Amber”. The song clocks in under two and a half minutes, but she packs a 5/4 rhythm and hocket vocal patterns into that space without it ever feeling rushed or overstuffed. “The 5/4 rhythm is determined but wonky, while the hocket is fun and chatty (yet relentless), holding so much tension”, she says, and that’s undoubtedly what comes through: the beat keeps stumbling forward, never quite settling, which fits a song about wanting to skip past the hard part and land somewhere better.
The lyrics circle around impatience. “I don’t want amber, only want it faster” is the whole thesis right there: amber as in stuck, as in traffic lights, as in that in-between color that means wait. She’s written before about this kind of limbo on her EP Her Side and on “Dark”, but “Amber” feels more physical, more like a body that can’t sit still. The “runner runner” refrain and the repeated “wake up wake up, chase her chase her” in the bridge play like a pulse quickening, matching the stomping energy she says she wanted to capture while writing it.
Production-wise, she’s the one who recorded and finished everything herself, and you can hear that hands-on control in how tight the arrangement is. Nothing feels decorative. The microtonal touches slide in around her vocal without ever showing off, and her voice does a lot of the emotional work: playful one second, almost frantic the next.
“Amber” is out now on AWAL, and it makes me want to hear what she does with a full band behind her.
