She holds back from all-out chaos, capturing something frighteningly more real.

Martha Skye Murphy is back with new single ‘Dogs’, a track that synthesises the intimate and the eerie. Her work has always possessed an edge of terror, and this is no exception, yet there is also a tenderness throughout. Throughout the music’s arc from gently arpeggiated chords into measured choke reverb chaos, there is room for Murphy to cosy up to the microphone and murmur her weightily sparse lyrics.

The delivery is almost torturously slow, making us work for every word that comes out to complete this oblique puzzle. As Murphy forces out the words “The water is rising”, we feel every millimetre. The glacial run of climate change imagery it initiates evokes the slow terror of this process, which unfolds too gradually to be felt from day to day (a reason climate change can be frighteningly ignored by those with the power to mitigate it).

‘Dogs’ captures a broader cross section of its character’s anxieties than climate change alone, spiralling towards that existential threat from the contemplation of a muse whom “My dogs wouldn’t recognise.” The piece crystallises an icy moment of brooding. In managing its chaotic elements, it better mirrors the troubled mind, with screams and screeches leaving room for the close-miked concerns that repeat and mutate alongside the music.