Billie Eilish
Guitar Songs
(Darkroom/Interscope Records)
Billie Eilish is an artist that has a tendency to wrap up her emotions in smooth production. Even her most emotionally authentic songs utilise the slick production of her producer/co-writer/ brother Finneas. There is a beauty to the songs 'listen before I go' and 'everything I wanted' even if it is in small details such as the pattering of rain throughout 'listen before I go' as Eilish details a suicide and the aching vocals on 'everything I wanted'.
These characteristics are not ones that inhabit 'Guitar Songs'- a two song EP that is far more stripped back and as a result far more raw. The song 'TV' is a stark commentary on the all-consuming nature of celebrity culture as '... the Internet's gone wild watching movie stars on trial while they're overturning Roe v Wade'. There is a maturity to the way Eilish discusses this-throughout the song she never positions herself at the centre, merely showing herself to be part of the world perpetuating these ideas.
However, where 'TV' is controlled and detached, the other song 'The 30th' is anything but. Eliish discusses a failed suicide of a close friend and is brutally aware of how likely it could have been for her friend to die "if it happened to you on a different day". The song ends though, on a strangely euphoric note as she proclaims "you're alive" over and over in a small celebration of the person's life even in a dark moment there is a small hint of beauty in this person's life.
Despite not being tied to an upcoming album, in an interview she said that these songs were the only ones that have been written so far, these two songs show an immense growth for the artist that will hopefully continue into her forthcoming work.
