Mia June – Careful
Mia June’s “Careful” is out now on Father/Daughter Records, and it’s a quieter, more folk-leaning turn than the wiry guitar sound of her album Pet. The Melbourne singer-songwriter (real name Mia Deriu) built this one entirely DIY with bandmates Patrick Whitford and Ethan Dixon, recorded and mixed at Whitford’s home in Melbourne, which is the first time she’s done a record this hands-on. The track opens on close, crisp acoustic guitar under an intimate vocal, then lets dark, textured percussion build toward a wailing outro.
The song works as a love letter and a warning at the same time. She’s writing to someone from her past, and the images keep circling whether they’d actually meet her in the mess of a life mid-transition. There’s a line about being too old now for her hands to shake the way they used to, and a heart pendant broken in halves, small, details that pin the song’s ambivalence down better than any grand statement would. The chorus opens into free, loose strumming that reads like relief, and that’s the moment I keep coming back to: the way the arrangement lets go right when the words are at their most uncertain.
Written back in early 2023, “Careful” is one of a run of new singles from June, and it makes a case for her as one of the more interesting songwriters coming out of the Australian indie scene right now.
