A Sonic Hug from The Hague: Maida Rose’s Debut Track, ‘Harmony of Heartache’.
Words by Hannah Hayden
Maida Rose, the songwriting duo Roos Meijer and Javièr den Leeuw, recall: “Five years ago, we started writing together. Our idea was to capture our final years of adolescence in an album.” Their debut single, Harmony of Heartache is indeed an accurate picture of such a tender and exhaustingly exciting time. The whirling dream pop number is constructed from cool, knowing vocals that tell of a worn-out routine in the verses. However, this jadedness evolves into a funky and glimmering chorus, a moment of respite and comfort from the banality of day-to-day existence. This lovely debut belies a sense of optimism that is both childlike but also borne of tangible experience, a perfect encapsulation of the delicate and changeable time that is late adolescence.
Hailing from Dutch seaside city The Hague, the band’s social media is mostly comprised of enviable shorelines and videos of the sun bouncing off of waves. This dreamy landscape, too, is captured in this single and surely in their eventual album: the hissing of synths, soft backing vocals and shakers. Maida Rose liken themselves to dream pop mainstays Beach House and Cigarettes After Sex, and I proffer that fans of TOPS and Mild High Club will also be excited for this debut release.
The song is essentially a sonic hug, and as we have been made aware time and time again, this a moment in history when we really need a hug. A feat of self-production, we look forward to hearing more from Maida Rose after this thoughtful and tender debut. Find the band on Spotify here.
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